Next week's Wonkette Movie Night is π¨ πΊπππ π°π π»ππ π«πππ (1964) available for free on Tubi, the Roku Channel and Prime. https://substack.com/@ziggywiggy/note/c-39840621
I am quite enjoying Mark Cuban at the moment. Here is a thread between he and Vivek
Vivek Ramaswamy
I wonβt hold it against you for not knowing the first thing about the U.S. Dept of Education. Hereβs how itβll work: Iβll take the $80BN spent by a useless & toxic agency & put that $$ in the pockets of parents to send their kids to better schools. Itβs quite sensible, actually.
Mark Cuban
I'll play along. 80b will fund your UBI for school age parents program? Let's do the math on a per child basis.
There are about 75m kids 17 and under, and 25m 0 - 5 yrs old. Do the parents of those kids under 5 get anything ? I'll presume not
So your 80b is allocated across 50m kids. That's 1600 per kid right? Per Year. Right $800 per semester ?
How do you think that $1600 gets spent?
But wait there's more.
Let's say parents are efficient buyers and schools go along with letting any child in. Do you think the best public schools will accept any child for $1600 ? Possibly over-flowing their schools? Requiring more local and state tax money to expand ?
And ,I'm guessing your biggest donors will have something to say about who goes to their kid's school. My NIMBY-dar is strong on this one.
So let's pretend that parents and schools figure out some equilibrium and there are schools that will add the children for 1600.
Who is going to pay for make those schools bigger ? Do you think $1600 per additional child will cover the capital and ongoing expenses bill ?
How happy do you think taxpayers w no kids will be about that ?
But wait there is more... at first glance giving $1600 to parents may sound great, but the reality is not every parent can take their kids to school across town.
So now you have kids who can only go to the closest school with only 1600 per yr to contribute. But those same schools may have really needed the funds that the DOE offered them . That money is gone. And they are now getting just $1600 per student. Think that covers what they lost ? If not, what happens to the kids that go to those schools ?
Do your economics advisors believe that the long term cost to American taxpayers for kids that go to underperforming schools increase or decrease state and federal deficits ?
Just for clarification.
I think there is unlimited room for improvement in how we handle education in this country. I just think your approach is really dumb
PS. I did all this in about 30 minutes while watching the end of the Ole Miss Tulane game. It's a great game
ALL liberturfdian/techdudebro "ideas" can be deconstructed exactly this easily. They sound so SMRT! And then you give it just a bit of thought and it's all a steaming pile of horseshit.
Federal dollars primarily fund programs and positions that provide additional support for students with special needs. Without federal funds, most districts could not afford it. Vivek is advocating not educating students with disabilities to give more money to private companies.
how sad is this: Donald Trump held a fundraising dinner for Rudy Giuliani and only ten people showed up. wait, did I say sad? I meant to say it's fucking hilarious
I'm betting he got $50,000. For one thing, we only know what the fundraisers said they raised. I'm betting they overclaimed it by $500k. The organizers and Mr. Fart, took $200k a piece, and the venue needed 50k to cover their costs, insurance and mafia charges...
Guy tries to tries to cross the Atlantic in a giant, floating hamster wheel, threatens Coat Guard with a knife when they try to stop him, claims the whole things wired to explode if they try to come aboard.
Anyone else watch What We Do in the Shadows? They have an "energy vampire' that drains people of their energy by droning on and on. Just was reminded of him. Very funny show.
I loved the movie too. The tv show is done by the same people who made the movie, it's the same kind of documentary style about vampires but with new characters and it's hilarious.
Nikki Haley not able to say if she agrees with Vivek Ramasmarmy's plan to deport birthright citizens who were born in America to immigrants. Apparently she's not a ConSTootUshional ORiginAlist, since that's a right that's in the 14th Amendment.
Elon Musk, and Rupert Murdoch, and Melania Trump, go straight back to whatever rocks you slithered out from underneath, and oh yeah, leave all that money and your companies behind, assholes.
Was spoiled my week in Vancooooouver for my son's wedding. Watched Canadian news and heard a lot about the Entire World.
Turn on the news back in Arizona and its like "There was a terrible earthquake in Morocco but lets first spend 20 minutes with 6 people on the screen yelling at eachother about some lie PAB typed on social media about an election over a year away."
So the head coach at Michigan State was found in an investigation to have committed sexual harassment, putting his 90 mil 10 year contract at great risk. The victim was someone he brought in to train his team on avoiding sexual harassment.
How msu responds to this after the Larry Nassar scandal will be illuminating. I'm not optimistic.
$90 million over 10 years. But it costs too much money to give lunch to schoolkids. Or fix healthcare in American.
My Ass. I won't ever tolerate anyone making such excuses. We can afford to run our society decently, meet the needs of our citizens. We've just decided not to.
Elon Musk has $250 billion dollars, and is controlling Starlink in Ukraine to help RUSSIA, and has his own space program. Plus Ford and GM have switched their EV battery chargers to being Tesla specific, so he'll eventually control the power source for everyone's car. I'm starting to think 90% taxes sound like a good idea, and make them RETROACTIVE.
He won't control charging, it's a connector and a protocol, both of which are published and free to use. If anything he'll get pushed out by other companies.
Just like the F150 Lightning is going to outsell the Infantile wank mobile. Sorry, Cybertruck.
Also, too, get rid of the cap on FICA taxes. You can make a billion a year, and you only get charged $125K for the year. They can afford to pay 6% in their income far better than I can.
Someone here mentioned a 100% income tax over 10 million dollars. I'm absolutely on board with that sort of thing now. Nobody should make so much money they never hear the word "no".
Nikki Haley can't even answer whether she thinks it's bad that Elon Musk is helping Russia in their war on Ukraine. I guess she'd have to admit it's wrong to allow private citizens to accumulate so much wealth.
She also babbles about "transparency in the classroom" and "law and order." LOL, yeah, right Nikki, you are SO different than the other GQP idiots. The reality is that if you get elected, you'll just cut taxes on the wealthy.
some clever interviewer (i will hold my breath) should bog down these word salads by asking the interviewee to explain, in minute detail, just what they mean by each of these phrases. would limit the ability for the salad to continue for another 5 minutes.
She looked stunned when Jake Tapper pushed back on her a little bit, by asking why Congress should have to interview 300 military people, because of ONE stupid fucking idiot senator from Alabama? Then she just spewed some shit about how the DOD shouldn't be paying for women service members to travel to get abortions, and CONGRESS should decide that. So much for being a moderate on abortion.
I REALLY don't want Congress dictating military strategy. And people do give up rights when they enter the military, but abortion should not be one of them. I was both surprised and pleased when the military said they'd pay, and I hope Alabama loses every penny they get from the military with Toobers' bullshit.
Hooo boy, you gave me an idea for a dystopian novel.
The military does ban abortion for soldiers. As the number of kids rises, the military shapes the education of those kids more and more, turning them into thoroughly indoctrinated soldiers. Meanwhile they slowly but steadily increase the propaganda to their soldiers about the "outbreed the enemy" tactic, which effectively becomes "outbreed the civilians" since the civilians do have access to reproductive control and don't get the propaganda to breed. Stock trading starts to be considered as a form of digital warfare, so the kids not fitting into military life now serve a purpose too: They procure funding.
Told from the perspective of a grizzled old veteran who watches one of those misfit kids grow up, and later from the perspective of one of those stock trading kids as he valiantly tries to resist the changes coming over his society. i.e. a hacker coming of age story in a militarized dystopian future. I'm still trying to decide if it should get a happy ending or a downer ending. I think I'm better at downer endings.
She keeps babbling about how Biden is weak on China. She never bothers to mention that the guy she worked for, and his daughter, did their business in China, so shutting down trade with China is just a fantasy she's peddling to gullible idiots.
Biden on the other hand, did actually ON shore jobs.
While we're waiting for a new story to make comments about, this is an excellent article that provides some insight into how people go down "rabbit holes" and "mirror worlds", I like the concept of "diagonalism" for how former left leaning people find themselves vehement supporters of far right conspiracies, and why so many "self help" types have developed fascist like thinking.
I've been watching this sort of thing happen for a long time. I haven't been at all surprised by any of it.
A dysfunctional family is a good analogy. Once the dysfunction really sets in, everyone pretends Dad isn't really drunk, when he climbs on top of the Thanksgiving dinner table and passes out using the Turkey as a pillow. The dinner goes on, almost as if it's all perfectly normal.
America's lived, everyday, reality, has been different from our shared cultural myths my whole life (I'm 57 now). The reality and the narrative have been diverging more and more, faster and faster. By now there's very little similarity anymore.
But we keep pretending it's all the same.
That kind of cognitive dissonance leaves the door open for all kinds of weird shit. If people have to pretend prescription drug prices are set by the markets, according to supply and demand; it's pretty easy to believe COVID vaccinations include nanochip surveillance. If we have to pretend that billionaires should rightfully pay a lower percentage of their income in taxes than their servants do, because they're "job creators," then it's not hard to believe there's a global conspiracy to kidnap children and farm their glands for adrenochrome.
Once that dynamic gets going, all the grifters are gonna smell money and follow the trail.
If we're going to fix any of this, we're going to have to get honest about what we all already know is going on. That's the first step in fixing a family. We're going to have to admit that Dad's behavior is weird. Then we have to admit that there's something wrong with Dad. Next we have to admit that Dad really shouldn't drink anymore.
America has to admit that our economic system isn't working the way we pretend it does. And then the next step, and then the next.
But some very powerful interests benefit from keeping the grift going, so that's what we're most likely to do. Until it crashes. Then we'll argue about whose fault it is, rather than fixing things.
Just watched (okay, skipped through) the live action Little Mermaid. The only new thing, and I wish they'd leaned into it more, was that they set it in a Black space (except with a white Prince, and not sure why they made that choice, since they had a Black princess and a Black Queen); and the multi-racial sisters, explained as "Princesses of the Seven Seas" which just made all kinds of sense.
Anyway, it was fine, even good (the CGI is astonishing), but I'm not sure I get the point of making it at all, since it was pretty much frame by frame the animated movie. (They did this with Aladdin, too, and it did not remotely work as well as it did here, and yes I am the reason they made these, because yes I watched the fcking things I will not be taking questions as this time)
I haven't seen any of them and Robin was in at least one of them. I said "anything" with 'Robin Williams was great'. Just because I don't agree with your bitching does not diminish my gratitude for Robin.
Disney's always been at the forefront of pushing to make copyright last longer. I believe active use of the copyright resets the date.
I will still give them credit for trying to diversify their remakes and address criticisms of the originals, even if they've all seemed to fall short so far.
It's not exactly like that, since the copyright on the original Little Mermaid film isn't affected by the new version, and the original book has long been public domain, but it certainly does tend to muddy the waters regarding whether some elements in any new (non-Disney) work might be derivative of the cartoon or the new live action version. It also makes it less viable to make a new non-Disney version of the tale given the competition.
If it's too long for you to read it, don't read it and then completely misrepresent what I was saying in order to insert politics into a discussion that has nothing to do with politics. I completely forgot about the politics part, in fact. Plus I didn't dislike it, I just don't see the point of it.
O
*n'existe pas*
https://f4.bcbits.com/img/a1098935751_10.jpg
Next week's Wonkette Movie Night is π¨ πΊπππ π°π π»ππ π«πππ (1964) available for free on Tubi, the Roku Channel and Prime. https://substack.com/@ziggywiggy/note/c-39840621
THANK YOU Ziggywiggy. It's my favorite Pink Panther movie!
yay! :D
Breakfast here, and breakfast now.
Eat a chicken, pig and cow.
Leave breakfast behind, and well,
You will surely go to Hell.
The muses have spoken.
I am quite enjoying Mark Cuban at the moment. Here is a thread between he and Vivek
Vivek Ramaswamy
I wonβt hold it against you for not knowing the first thing about the U.S. Dept of Education. Hereβs how itβll work: Iβll take the $80BN spent by a useless & toxic agency & put that $$ in the pockets of parents to send their kids to better schools. Itβs quite sensible, actually.
Mark Cuban
I'll play along. 80b will fund your UBI for school age parents program? Let's do the math on a per child basis.
There are about 75m kids 17 and under, and 25m 0 - 5 yrs old. Do the parents of those kids under 5 get anything ? I'll presume not
So your 80b is allocated across 50m kids. That's 1600 per kid right? Per Year. Right $800 per semester ?
How do you think that $1600 gets spent?
But wait there's more.
Let's say parents are efficient buyers and schools go along with letting any child in. Do you think the best public schools will accept any child for $1600 ? Possibly over-flowing their schools? Requiring more local and state tax money to expand ?
And ,I'm guessing your biggest donors will have something to say about who goes to their kid's school. My NIMBY-dar is strong on this one.
So let's pretend that parents and schools figure out some equilibrium and there are schools that will add the children for 1600.
Who is going to pay for make those schools bigger ? Do you think $1600 per additional child will cover the capital and ongoing expenses bill ?
How happy do you think taxpayers w no kids will be about that ?
But wait there is more... at first glance giving $1600 to parents may sound great, but the reality is not every parent can take their kids to school across town.
So now you have kids who can only go to the closest school with only 1600 per yr to contribute. But those same schools may have really needed the funds that the DOE offered them . That money is gone. And they are now getting just $1600 per student. Think that covers what they lost ? If not, what happens to the kids that go to those schools ?
Do your economics advisors believe that the long term cost to American taxpayers for kids that go to underperforming schools increase or decrease state and federal deficits ?
Just for clarification.
I think there is unlimited room for improvement in how we handle education in this country. I just think your approach is really dumb
PS. I did all this in about 30 minutes while watching the end of the Ole Miss Tulane game. It's a great game
ALL liberturfdian/techdudebro "ideas" can be deconstructed exactly this easily. They sound so SMRT! And then you give it just a bit of thought and it's all a steaming pile of horseshit.
Federal dollars primarily fund programs and positions that provide additional support for students with special needs. Without federal funds, most districts could not afford it. Vivek is advocating not educating students with disabilities to give more money to private companies.
seems fair.
Thank you.
I started reading and realized that neither of them know what they are talking about!
Sunday Sermon...
@itsJeffTiedrich
how sad is this: Donald Trump held a fundraising dinner for Rudy Giuliani and only ten people showed up. wait, did I say sad? I meant to say it's fucking hilarious
Well, $1 Million raised.
Maybe if the dinner hadn't been $100,000 per plate, more people would have shown up.
And the portions were so small!
A million raised for Roodles, less trumps cut. So Roodles probably netted $500,000.
I'm betting he got $50,000. For one thing, we only know what the fundraisers said they raised. I'm betting they overclaimed it by $500k. The organizers and Mr. Fart, took $200k a piece, and the venue needed 50k to cover their costs, insurance and mafia charges...
He's reportedly 'millions' in debt already.
So sad.
Time for a pity party.
$10,000.
They probably still took expenses out of Rudy's half.
True. I forgot to take that into account, so Roodles netted $357.94
Doodles probably owes $6K for this fundraiser, given Trumpβs traditional cut of 99.9%.
Now THIS is my kind of content!
Guy tries to tries to cross the Atlantic in a giant, floating hamster wheel, threatens Coat Guard with a knife when they try to stop him, claims the whole things wired to explode if they try to come aboard.
https://www.npr.org/2023/09/07/1198252469/coast-guard-hamster-wheel-reza-baluchi-atlantic-ocean
*gonna go discourage my second grandson from his dream of being in the coast guard*
Not his first hamster rodeo.
Hamster Rodeo is the name of my... aw, fuck it.
Thank you.
(not boatporm)
Seems reasonable.
He told the officers that he had five or six lights and two life jackets. "I have a GPS. I have a laptop [to] watch movie,"
Anyone else watch What We Do in the Shadows? They have an "energy vampire' that drains people of their energy by droning on and on. Just was reminded of him. Very funny show.
Colin-Robinson! I hyphenate his name because it only ever gets said in its entirety.
Perfect, it was too funny when he was a child.
Creepy adult head on a kidβs body. Loved it!
I have seen the guy who becomes invisible as he drones on.
OMG, yes!!!!!
It frequently has me in tears from laughter. The tv show is even better than the movie it was based on IMO.
Seriously?! I loved the movie! And watching it with Wonks!
I loved the movie too. The tv show is done by the same people who made the movie, it's the same kind of documentary style about vampires but with new characters and it's hilarious.
And on and on and on and on and
Is that like Alcoholic Anonymous for people who talk too much?
That just went WHOOSH!, I see.
Like the ISS
*spittake.gif*
I was laughing hard as well
I'll bet I can guess how you were reminded of him...
Yay for you! Waking up is 99% of it.
Hey bub, good too see ya, man
Thanks, good to see all of you.
Where? I keep hearing people mention it.
It's the funniest show on tv except for Our Flag Means Death(done by Taika Waititi also)
Also streaming on Hulu if you have that.
Thanks, will check it out this evening.
On FX.
This is exactly why I never made it past maybe the fifth episode of "The Office." Way too close to home.
The original Office just made me want turn it off.
People I knew said it was just like their job. I told them to quit.
Bunnday.
Bunny Venom! Use it to murder your coffee or flavor your enemies!
https://substack.com/profile/157161709-tehbaddr/note/c-20849399
Me: does a Sunday crossword
Me: vacuums the living-room
Oven: bacon is in here
Me: talks some shit at the intartubes
Oven: you can smell it now, right?
Me: oven bacon on a Sunday morning. Who is better than me?
I don't have any bacon.
Your life is incomplete.
Still, there are people that love you.
I've got his bacon now.
I have your mom's bacon.
She's baking it now.
And, properly, poaching some eggs (that's what I pay her for - the rest is just for fun).
Nikki Haley not able to say if she agrees with Vivek Ramasmarmy's plan to deport birthright citizens who were born in America to immigrants. Apparently she's not a ConSTootUshional ORiginAlist, since that's a right that's in the 14th Amendment.
If Trump wins I'd be happy to be deported to most of my ancestral countries. (Not sure about you "Great" Britain. Fuck kings.)
Exactly. I think someone needs to ask for details. How do they intend to redefine βbirthright citizenshipβ? Can we deport Ted Cruz?
https://law.stackexchange.com/questions/40811/what-happens-to-abandoned-infant-citizenship#:~:text=a%20person%20of%20unknown%20parentage,they%20are%20citizens%20by%20birth.
Elon Musk, and Rupert Murdoch, and Melania Trump, go straight back to whatever rocks you slithered out from underneath, and oh yeah, leave all that money and your companies behind, assholes.
uh β¦ Vivek's parents were immigrants, were they not? Is he offering to deport himself?
Self-deport! Disrupt!
She's no Bobby Jindal.
We're about to get another idiot governor in LA. Jeff Landry. He's a horrendous MAGAT.
Oh, JFC, didn't you have a decent Democrat for a while after Jindal bankrupted your state?
Yes John Bel Edwards. He terms out soon. He's been human and decent considering all the flak he gets from the idiots.
Piyush was in a class by himself.
Was spoiled my week in Vancooooouver for my son's wedding. Watched Canadian news and heard a lot about the Entire World.
Turn on the news back in Arizona and its like "There was a terrible earthquake in Morocco but lets first spend 20 minutes with 6 people on the screen yelling at eachother about some lie PAB typed on social media about an election over a year away."
Want off this ride now, mum...
I do like the CBC.
So the head coach at Michigan State was found in an investigation to have committed sexual harassment, putting his 90 mil 10 year contract at great risk. The victim was someone he brought in to train his team on avoiding sexual harassment.
How msu responds to this after the Larry Nassar scandal will be illuminating. I'm not optimistic.
MSU has already failed miserably in its handling of this latest problem. Nine months to investigate. No transparency. I am disgusted.
They are waiting to have a hearing until the team has a bye.
"Okay class, today we're going to learn about the consequences of committing sexual harassment. Observe as I report your coach. Pay attention."
$90 million over 10 years. But it costs too much money to give lunch to schoolkids. Or fix healthcare in American.
My Ass. I won't ever tolerate anyone making such excuses. We can afford to run our society decently, meet the needs of our citizens. We've just decided not to.
Elon Musk has $250 billion dollars, and is controlling Starlink in Ukraine to help RUSSIA, and has his own space program. Plus Ford and GM have switched their EV battery chargers to being Tesla specific, so he'll eventually control the power source for everyone's car. I'm starting to think 90% taxes sound like a good idea, and make them RETROACTIVE.
He won't control charging, it's a connector and a protocol, both of which are published and free to use. If anything he'll get pushed out by other companies.
Just like the F150 Lightning is going to outsell the Infantile wank mobile. Sorry, Cybertruck.
His Tesla chargers will always be Tesla chargers, and they're free to use NOW. That won't last.
I'm sure his car company will eventually be outsold by Lexus and Toyota, but he'll still control all the chargers.
PS - I tried to buy an F150 Lightning this year, and I couldn't even get on the waiting list.
Fund defense budget with taxes on assets above, say 10 x the average citizen's net worth. Let those whose assets are being defended pay for it.
Also, too, get rid of the cap on FICA taxes. You can make a billion a year, and you only get charged $125K for the year. They can afford to pay 6% in their income far better than I can.
Someone here mentioned a 100% income tax over 10 million dollars. I'm absolutely on board with that sort of thing now. Nobody should make so much money they never hear the word "no".
Nobody should be allowed to have their own space program, either. That's fucking ridiculous.
90% is close enough.
Worked before.
Also, bring back inheritance taxes for anything over $1 million dollars. .
Inheritance is income, so it should get taxed as such.
People that make those sorts of excuses should be horsewhipped.
Come into my parlor, said the spider to the fly.
The scenario reeks of perversion.
Why do you hate football and America? Go back to Russia, commie!
Marxist-Leninist Football (the other kind) will rule the world!!!11!!!!!!!
Nikki Haley can't even answer whether she thinks it's bad that Elon Musk is helping Russia in their war on Ukraine. I guess she'd have to admit it's wrong to allow private citizens to accumulate so much wealth.
She also babbles about "transparency in the classroom" and "law and order." LOL, yeah, right Nikki, you are SO different than the other GQP idiots. The reality is that if you get elected, you'll just cut taxes on the wealthy.
some clever interviewer (i will hold my breath) should bog down these word salads by asking the interviewee to explain, in minute detail, just what they mean by each of these phrases. would limit the ability for the salad to continue for another 5 minutes.
She looked stunned when Jake Tapper pushed back on her a little bit, by asking why Congress should have to interview 300 military people, because of ONE stupid fucking idiot senator from Alabama? Then she just spewed some shit about how the DOD shouldn't be paying for women service members to travel to get abortions, and CONGRESS should decide that. So much for being a moderate on abortion.
Instead of having to pay for their travel, they should have access locally. How about at clinics built on the military reservations?
I REALLY don't want Congress dictating military strategy. And people do give up rights when they enter the military, but abortion should not be one of them. I was both surprised and pleased when the military said they'd pay, and I hope Alabama loses every penny they get from the military with Toobers' bullshit.
Hooo boy, you gave me an idea for a dystopian novel.
The military does ban abortion for soldiers. As the number of kids rises, the military shapes the education of those kids more and more, turning them into thoroughly indoctrinated soldiers. Meanwhile they slowly but steadily increase the propaganda to their soldiers about the "outbreed the enemy" tactic, which effectively becomes "outbreed the civilians" since the civilians do have access to reproductive control and don't get the propaganda to breed. Stock trading starts to be considered as a form of digital warfare, so the kids not fitting into military life now serve a purpose too: They procure funding.
Told from the perspective of a grizzled old veteran who watches one of those misfit kids grow up, and later from the perspective of one of those stock trading kids as he valiantly tries to resist the changes coming over his society. i.e. a hacker coming of age story in a militarized dystopian future. I'm still trying to decide if it should get a happy ending or a downer ending. I think I'm better at downer endings.
I hope so, too. Biden already didn't relocate some base that was supposed to be moved to Alabama from Colorado (I think).
Sic Mehdi Hassan on her, that'll fix her little red wagon.
It's a bad combination: being a bog standard (pandering) politician, and a member of a political party with a rotten foundation.
She keeps babbling about how Biden is weak on China. She never bothers to mention that the guy she worked for, and his daughter, did their business in China, so shutting down trade with China is just a fantasy she's peddling to gullible idiots.
Biden on the other hand, did actually ON shore jobs.
we both used the word "bog" in our non-comments, do i owe you a coke or something?
Nikki shines out like a turd amongst diarrhea...
She's definitely "special."
I'm hoping the GQP primary voters aren't smart enough to nominate her.
While we're waiting for a new story to make comments about, this is an excellent article that provides some insight into how people go down "rabbit holes" and "mirror worlds", I like the concept of "diagonalism" for how former left leaning people find themselves vehement supporters of far right conspiracies, and why so many "self help" types have developed fascist like thinking.
Good story on the two Naomis.
https://newrepublic.com/article/175254/naomi-klein-naomi-wolf-doppelganger-journey-unnerving-world
I've been watching this sort of thing happen for a long time. I haven't been at all surprised by any of it.
A dysfunctional family is a good analogy. Once the dysfunction really sets in, everyone pretends Dad isn't really drunk, when he climbs on top of the Thanksgiving dinner table and passes out using the Turkey as a pillow. The dinner goes on, almost as if it's all perfectly normal.
America's lived, everyday, reality, has been different from our shared cultural myths my whole life (I'm 57 now). The reality and the narrative have been diverging more and more, faster and faster. By now there's very little similarity anymore.
But we keep pretending it's all the same.
That kind of cognitive dissonance leaves the door open for all kinds of weird shit. If people have to pretend prescription drug prices are set by the markets, according to supply and demand; it's pretty easy to believe COVID vaccinations include nanochip surveillance. If we have to pretend that billionaires should rightfully pay a lower percentage of their income in taxes than their servants do, because they're "job creators," then it's not hard to believe there's a global conspiracy to kidnap children and farm their glands for adrenochrome.
Once that dynamic gets going, all the grifters are gonna smell money and follow the trail.
If we're going to fix any of this, we're going to have to get honest about what we all already know is going on. That's the first step in fixing a family. We're going to have to admit that Dad's behavior is weird. Then we have to admit that there's something wrong with Dad. Next we have to admit that Dad really shouldn't drink anymore.
America has to admit that our economic system isn't working the way we pretend it does. And then the next step, and then the next.
But some very powerful interests benefit from keeping the grift going, so that's what we're most likely to do. Until it crashes. Then we'll argue about whose fault it is, rather than fixing things.
Ooooh, thanks. I was wondering WTF happened to Naomi Wolf and how she bought into the paranoid woo.
Just watched (okay, skipped through) the live action Little Mermaid. The only new thing, and I wish they'd leaned into it more, was that they set it in a Black space (except with a white Prince, and not sure why they made that choice, since they had a Black princess and a Black Queen); and the multi-racial sisters, explained as "Princesses of the Seven Seas" which just made all kinds of sense.
Anyway, it was fine, even good (the CGI is astonishing), but I'm not sure I get the point of making it at all, since it was pretty much frame by frame the animated movie. (They did this with Aladdin, too, and it did not remotely work as well as it did here, and yes I am the reason they made these, because yes I watched the fcking things I will not be taking questions as this time)
Anything that included Robin Williams is a treasure.
Robin Williams wasn't in the live action remake, it was Will Smith and he was terrible, along with the rest of that movie.
I haven't seen any of them and Robin was in at least one of them. I said "anything" with 'Robin Williams was great'. Just because I don't agree with your bitching does not diminish my gratitude for Robin.
Wow. Done here. Blocked.
It's at least partly about extending the copyrights.
Sony rebooting the Spider-Man franchise repeatedly agrees.
Hey, their second reboot gave us some good movies. And I hear nothing but great things about the Spiderverse films, but I haven't gotten to them yet.
They're amazing!
Oh, I love your cynicism.
Disney's always been at the forefront of pushing to make copyright last longer. I believe active use of the copyright resets the date.
I will still give them credit for trying to diversify their remakes and address criticisms of the originals, even if they've all seemed to fall short so far.
It's not exactly like that, since the copyright on the original Little Mermaid film isn't affected by the new version, and the original book has long been public domain, but it certainly does tend to muddy the waters regarding whether some elements in any new (non-Disney) work might be derivative of the cartoon or the new live action version. It also makes it less viable to make a new non-Disney version of the tale given the competition.
If it's too long for you to read it, don't read it and then completely misrepresent what I was saying in order to insert politics into a discussion that has nothing to do with politics. I completely forgot about the politics part, in fact. Plus I didn't dislike it, I just don't see the point of it.