Open Mic for the week of 7/10/2023
There’s a phenomenon where someone writes an essay about this or that but someone else wants to discuss something that has not yet made it to the front page.
This is unfair to everybody involved. It’s unfair to the guy who wrote the original essay because, presumably, he wants to talk about his original essay. It’s unfair to the guy who wants to talk about his link because it looks like he’s trying to change the subject. It’s unfair to the people who go to the comments to read up on the thoughts of the commentariat for the original essay and now we’re talking about some other guy’s links.
So!
The intention is to have a new one of these every week. If you want to talk about a link, post it here! Or, heck, use it as an open thread.
And, if it rolls off, we’ll make a new one. With a preamble just like this one.
It’s difficult to know how to respond to such news:
Some say “is this not what prison is for?” while others might say “but maybe Nassar is innocent and we just need to hold him until new evidence might surface”.Report
Prison is t for punishing child rapists? Fascinating.
There is an absolute right and wrong in this world and Larry Nassar did absolute wrongs. Incarceration was the least right thing to do in response. The fact that it’s well known in popular culture that child rapists don’t do well in prison is what it is.Report
Well, I saw (generally) two responses to the Nassar puncture incident.
1. This is Justice and it is Injustice that it required the General Population of the prison to provide Justice. We, as a society, should have done this to Nassar.
2. This is Injustice and it normalizes General Population violence to much more sympathetic prisoners who probably shouldn’t be in prison in the first place.
Nassar can probably look forward to incidents like this for the rest of his life.
Personally, I think that he’s a great candidate for The Death Penalty. As would be all prisoners that you and I would agree that it’d be great if someone in the General Population stabbed them to death in the laundry room.Report
“The fact that it’s well known in popular culture that child rapists don’t do well in prison is what it is.”
(checks username)
No, you are the guy who was assuring us that the only reason black people ever got shot was that white people were racist. I’m confused, is it OK or is it not OK for people to just Up And Decide that some dude Needs Killin’?Report
I told your I black peoples getting shot by cops was the result of a police culture and mission that makes violence a priority; that presupposes all black people are criminals, and that is historically rooted in runaway slave patrols.
I know nuance is hard for you but Nasar’s victims deserve justice in a way that tossing him in general population where he was likely to get shanked wouldn’t give them. At no punt now or elsewhere did I say or will I say he deserves killin. Because that keys him off too easy.Report
“Incarceration was the least right thing to do in response.”
Well, that’s not true. Reinstating him would be worse. But what would be better?Report
Chemical castration and being forced to work in programs for recovery of sexual abuse would be far more just in terms of actually repaying his “debt.” Putting him in general population where he gets shanked – which should have been anticipated- was the bare bones uncreative minimum.Report
What would a chemically castrated manipulative person do to help victims of sexual abuse? Janitorial services?Report
Here’s your response……You don’t need jail…
https://twitter.com/Parabellum2021/status/1673534788139974661?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1673534788139974661%7Ctwgr%5Ef9e9d386c1c979284b6ad053212127e68a734e36%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fgunfreezone.net%2Fpage%2F10%2FReport
Getting society to rely on vigilante justice is bad.
It’s why vigilantes tend to get stomped good and hard.Report
Vigilantes come about when the rule of law and order either doesn’t exist, or is ineffective. Parallels can be drawn…Report
Just like the state shouldn’t pressure private publishers to do the equivalent of censorship, the state shouldn’t in any way encourage prisoners to do the equivalent of cruel and unusual punishment.
I have mixed feelings about capital punishment. I suppose I would accept it only in cases where the prisoner constitutes such a threat that he can’t be safely imprisoned. But I’m fine with rapists being on the list of contenders for capital punishment.Report
In any given discussion of Capital Punishment, someone brings up the old “but if there was a mistake somewhere, we need multiple appeals to protect us against accidentally killing an innocent man”.
Which is all well and good, I suppose.
But that doesn’t bubble up in cases like Nassar. Of course, he wasn’t eligible for the Death Penalty… so we’re just stuck hoping for him to get an unofficial one.
Hey. It’s Justice.Report
Nassar will be in federal prison until 2077 (or 2068 for good behaviour), then be shipped to Michigan prison for 40 years, after which he has to be registered as a sex offender. That seems reasonable to me.Report
The death penalty, but, like, we just wait for them to die of old age.Report
Well, yeah. He’s off the streets, so good for us, and it’s both punishment and a warning to others to have him experiencing prison life. And then he dies when he dies.Report
It’s not really necessary to “respond” to this at all. And from what I’ve seen so far, not really advisable.Report
I’ll let the internet know.Report
You’re not responsible for the whole internet, just your own little corner and what you choose to talk about in it.Report
Fair enough.
Thank you for monitoring our corner.Report
You’re welcome.Report
Are we sure he was ‘stabbed’, or was it just some new form of surgery? He was probably just confused, and this is a legitimate medical treatment. We probably should dither about this for a decade until a bunch of victims come forward.
More seriously, and I should point this out: No matter how much we absolutely do not care about this man being stabbed, we do need to actually care that people in prison are just…allowed to stab people. While the prison staff looks the other way or even encourages them. They’re just allowed to do that.
I don’t think we put anyone in prison with any sort of ‘But while you’re locked up, you’re allowed to stab people, as a treat’ part of their sentence, but apparently we have.Report
Not just stab them, if Norm MacDonald’s jokes are any indication.Report
They found the stabber and the stabber has given a statement:
Report
Ten Second News went away for a while, only to come back as Ten Second News 2.0 Beta. At first glance, at least, it appears to be pretty much the same as it was before. Any new features we should know about?Report
Well, it hasn’t gotten sucked up in a complete site crash. That’s new.Report
I’ve gotta admit: I am not sure whether this would make me better or worse off than if it had not happened. Maybe Blizzard can finally get revamped?
Report
Doctor bodycams now on the table:
If you’ve been thinking about sending little Presleigh to a Day Care but wanted to make sure that the Day Care had cameras so you could monitor what was going on all day, you can use Watchmegrow.com and make sure your child is treated well and have *PROOF* that they are.Report
Oh, great, that’s going to just increase the number of unnecessary tests and make people less candid with their doctors.Report
Um, we sorta just solved a huge chunk of this via a _law_, although it is admittedly a law most people don’t know about and will have to fight to deal with:
Patients now have the right to all medical records about themselves, including doctor notes.
This rule went into effect at the start of the year, but no one seems to be in a hurry to publicize it and hospitals are not required to make any sort of simple interface or anything.
There’s going to be some…really racist assumptions written into a lot of those notes. Probably a bunch of just outright racism, too, but even beyond that, with assumptions about the behavior of Black patients and pain thresholds and lying about drug use.Report
The doctor who wrote this piece didn’t mention that law either. Just her willingness to wear a camera.Report
I bet somebody like Larry Nassar would have loved a program like Watchmegrow, so he could keep an eye on his kids while they were in preschool.Report
It’s weird that the preschools sell it as a benefit.
Like, “You can make sure that our helpers aren’t hitting your kids!”
I mean, does google even turn up anything on a search for “preschool teacher hitting children”?
Surely not.Report
So another canary in the coal mine has dropped:
Farmers Insurance is leaving Florida in latest blow to homeowners
https://www.tampabay.com/news/business/2023/07/11/farmers-insurance-florida-leaving-hurricanes-insolvent/
We’ve talked before how insurance companies are the leading edge of climate change and as expected they shrinking back from areas at great risk of climate fueled disasters.Report
If insurance companies are not allowed to turn a profit, they’re going to go out of business.
If they cannot charge rates that will allow them to turn a profit, they’re stuck between choosing to go out of business or go out of the state.
Bummer.Report
What would happen if they were allowed to raise rates commensurate with the risk?Report
One thing will be the same as discovered after the Bastrop fire in Texas some years back. Lots of the oldsters who owned their house outright had dropped their homeowners coverage because they had underestimated their living expenses. They were wiped out financially by the fire. Lots of oldsters in Florida who cashed out their house in the Northeast or Midwest and retired to Florida are going to get wiped out by hurricanes.Report
Not just homeowners.
Insurers all along the Gulf coast, from Florida to Texas are either collapsing, leaving, or trying to get the states to shoulder the risk.
What is interesting is how none of this is some hypothetical future science fiction. We’re watching climate change happen right now in real time.
And what is grimly amusing is an article like this:
https://www.eenews.net/articles/growing-insurance-crisis-spreads-to-texas/
ends with a quote:
At a meeting of the association’s governing board in January, board member Ron Walenta warned that if a storm hits a highly developed coastal county such as Galveston, the damage “is going to go way beyond $5.2 billion. There’s so much exposure there.”
And if claims exceed the association’s ability to pay, property owners likely would get stuck with partial payments.
“There’s nothing behind us. There’s no state guaranty fund. There’s no obligation from the state of Texas,” Walenta told fellow board members. “One bad storm, that’s it.”
Then of course an article in today’s WaPo:
Florida ocean temperatures at ‘downright shocking’ levels
The extreme heat around Florida is further intensifying the state’s ongoing heat wave and could make hurricanes worseReport
Insurance rates in Florida went up… like, a lot.Report
The companies’ first move is to drop the unprofitable line of business — in this case, property insurance. Or they exclude certain coverages. We have a federal flood insurance program because private insurers excluded flood coverage. We have Medicare because private insurers stopped writing coverage for oldsters. Private insurers would be fine writing property insurance in Florida if there were separate government hurricane coverage. Ditto California if there were government wildfire insurance.
I admit to looking forward (somewhat) to watching all those Republican Senators from hurricane prone areas struggling to decide if they support a federal hurricane insurance program.Report
You get more of what you subsidize — why should we encourage people to live in & move into areas so high risk that the insurance companies are running away? Let’s let the market signal do its work properly.Report
There are people who actually believe this, and there are people who say they believe this until it hits them in the pocketbook. My guess is that there are a lot more of the latter. Enough more to punish any politicians who act on these beliefs.Report
I can never argue with the point that there are more stupid/ignorant voters than smart voters.Report
You left out self-interested.Report
I guess it’s an open question whether people who would support a policy like this are motivated more by compassion/empathy or by the possibility that they themselves might be in the same situation. My intuition is that it’s more the former — people who instinctively want to help and who aren’t used to thinking about incentives, consequences, budgets etc.Report
Remember that scene in The Day After Tomorrow when Dennis Quaid is with the President and Joint Chiefs and they ask him what can be done and he takes a big sharpie and draws a line across the middle of the United States and tells them to abandon everyone north of the line?
Climate change and market forces will draw that line somewhere.
You can’t argue with the line, or lobby against it, or even shoot at it.
Except it won’t be one line, it will be pockets, entire swaths of the world that will be uninsurable and virtually uninhabitable except by the most risk tolerant and foolhardy.
Most of the state of Florida, most of the Gulf Coast, large parts of the Carolinas; Vast swaths of the Western states from Kansas to California, these areas will all become high risk areas of hurricanes, tornadoes, wildfires, and floods.
And worst, no one really can predict which areas will be affected. Who had “British Columbia being hit with hundred degree temperatures and firestorms wiping out entire towns” on their bingo card?
The thing about adding heat to the atmosphere is that the entire system becomes unstable and unpredictable.Report
“Should we?” is a good question. What Congress will do is a different question entirely.Report
The only way to get it done is to bundle it with California’s fire insurance.
They gotta ask themselves: How much do you want it done? Enough to help Californians?Report
Huw Edwards’ wife Vicky Flind names him as BBC star at centre of ‘£35k sex pics scandal
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12292255/Huw-Edwards-wife-Vicky-Flind-names-BBC-star-centre-35k-sex-pics-scandal.html
“Huw Edwards was today named by his own wife as the BBC star accused of paying £35,000 to a vulnerable teenager in return for explicit photographs – minutes after Scotland Yard dropped their probe into the allegations.” Hmm….seems Scotland Yard may have phoned it in. All that info and time…and…..witnesses…and SY still had nothing….cough…Report
She didn’t say he was guilty. She just confirmed that the rumored BBC star who was being investigated was him.Report
The SY investigation was closed, and the article stated. And the guy’s in the looney bin. Coincidence? Want me to speculate that is this guy wasn’t “important”, he’d be in jail already?Report
Who knows? I can picture a person having bad mental health which included sexual compulsions; bad mental health driven by guilt; bad mental health exacerbated by false accusations.Report
No suspects found.
Report
This was always the most likely outcome.Report
Oh, I know.
But that’s because I suspected that it belonged to a member of a set of people who would be able to influence the outcome.Report
Are you making the direct accusation of a coverup? Are you saying directly that the Secret Service failed to find a suspect not because finding useful clues was always unlikely but because it was somehow prevented from finding them and acting on them? Are you saying anything at all? Or JAQing off?Report
Oh, jeez. Would it be illegal for me to say that? If so, let me say in no uncertain terms that I am *NOT* saying that.
We have no reason to believe that one of the most observed rooms in the country that has more cameras than you can shake a stick at would leave the Secret Service with so much as a suspect for the white powder found there.
I am somewhat terrified that we have publicized an avenue of attack for powdered biological weapons and I hope that we double our oversight of that room, lest people die. Important people.Report
Report
If you want to read the formal statement:
Report
One thing I’ve noticed recently is that there has been a lot of peering into the world of Ultra-Orthodox Jews from non-Jews recently and not necessarily in a positive interest manner. This is particularly in regards to women in the Ultra-Orthodox world. There seems to be a growing sub-genre of literature about Jewish women finding liberation from the structures of Ultra-Orthodox Judaism.
I have extremely mixed feelings about this. I think a lot of this is more about concerns for women rather than apathy or hatred of Jews. At the same time this level of prying into a Jewish community by non-Jews seems to be messing into our own affairs in a way that wouldn’t be done to any other minority community. Muslim modesty clothing is treated as a diversity symbol despite the fact of having literally the same logic behind it as Jewish modesty clothing. Ultra-Orthodox men also have their version of modesty clothing that Muslim men do not. But I guess we Jews code as white, so non-Jews feel freer to interfere in our affairs while other socially conservative minority communities get left alone. It does not seem that fair really.Report
To what extent do “communities” have more rights than “individuals”?
If you think that rights are seated in the individual, women deserve the same rights whether they be white, or Black, or Jewish, or Native American, or Asian, or LatinX.
(And there are quite regularly kerfuffles over Muslim modesty clothing! The “people should be able to wear whatever they want!” folks show up with all sorts of assumptions about modesty clothing everywhere!)Report
At least in developed democracies, the answer is that individuals have the rights and not communities. I am not arguing for community rights over the individuals. What I am arguing for is that there is a certain inconsistency on how certain socially conservative practices are treated in different minority communities. Muslim modesty clothing gets treated as a diversity symbol while Jewish modesty clothing does not despite having basically the same reasoning behind it.Report
There’s currently a protest against forced hijab in Iran right now. It’s been going on for a while.
But I’m guessing that that’s not what you’re talking about. You’re talking about locally.
And… well, yeah. If someone Persian shows up wearing hijab at Popi’s Oysterette, that’s exotic and hip and funky and demonstrative of how sophisticated Popi’s is (and, by extension, the other patrons are).
Popi’s is probably a bad example, now that I think about it.
But there’s “exotic modesty” and there’s “local modesty” and, let’s face it, Jewish modesty is local. Which means that the Jewish women have had enough time to cast off their symbols of patriarchal expression, put on a rainbow bikini, and let their flags fly.
Kind of suspicious that they haven’t, actually.Report
Yes, I am mainly complaining about how the Ultra-Orthodox Jews get seen as uniquely bad because of insufficient exoticism. I am growing increasingly angry at the inconsistent treatment Jews receive in certain political quarters. On the one hand, people call on us to help because of our history of persecution. At the same time, when we need help we are treated as mere white people and not a real true minority. Absolute demand in one hand and complete denial in the other.
I believe that shell fish is hallal while it isn’t kosher. One of the differences between the two systems.Report
Oh, it’s not “uniquely” bad.
There’s another group that gets treated somewhat similarly.
But, you know.Report
You expect good faith from those political quarters. For the life of me I don’t know why. But I’m glad to see it when you question that assumption.Report
I don’t trust your side either. In the modern world, I Think that Jews are politically homeless but there are also too many Jews who can’t quite realize this.Report
Massachusetts allegedly works with Google to install an app on phones without users knowledge to track people during Covid….
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RrnKxHkUwzc&ab_channel=NewCivilLibertiesAlliance
https://nclalegal.org/2023/07/watch-government-spyware-on-your-phone-unfortunately-theres-an-app-for-that/
This will be interesting to follow…..Report
Some really *FASCINATING* sabotage going on against Disney here.
Daily Mail released these purported shots from the set of Snow White and the Seven Dwarves:
Then, get this, Disney has officially denied that these photos are related to their movie. From The Daily Beast:
Now I’m not someone who goes out to theaters all the time.
You know the upcoming Barbie vs. Oppenheimer release and all of the attendant drama? I’m not going to go to the theater to see either of those. I’ll wait for streaming. Seriously, movies these days are getting longer and longer and I will want to stop halfway through and pee under the best of circumstances. My saying “I’m probably not going to see that” isn’t an indicator of much. The last movie that got me to “Hey, I want to see that!” was The Batman (though, on a gaming night, we had a last-minute cancellation and the remainder of the group all agreed that we’d rather go see Guardians 3 than play board games after looking forward to D&D all week).
Where was I? Oh, yeah. Snow White.
My immediate response to seeing that picture was a variant of “yeah… probably won’t be seeing that”.
Those photos going viral is a pretty decent anti-campaign against Disney. All of the discourse surrounding the movie at this point centers on those fake photos and the defenses of falling for the fake photos all take the form of “well, you know… it’s Disney’s fault that it was plausible.”
Now, unfortunately, the whole “it’s actually the fault of other people that my being fooled was so easy” argument has a *LOT* of traction out there. And there are a lot of people who are engaged in mockery of the Snow White/Seven Dwarves thing using this fake photo and doing the opposite of advertising for Disney.
I mean, given the last 3 years or so for Disney, it’s not like I had particularly high hopes for Snow White, but the groundwork is being laid for it crashing harder than Little Mermaid.Report
Parody of RightWing Freakout or Poe’s Law?
Who can tell any more?Report
There are no pictures that could make me want to see a Disney live action remake of a cartoon classic. And I can’t imagine that the real thing would be that much different than these fakes. Someone here recently made a comment that any new movie is competing against all prior movies.
The Little Mermaid was a terrible looking, terrible sounding, terrible movie that crashed in the foreign market because its lead was black. That’s creepy. But Disney’s been floundering overseas in general, and not doing so great domestically either. Harrison Ford is still a white guy and no one wants to see him as Indy any more. Again, make a movie that looks better than the average thing on Tubi and we’ll talk.
Apropos of nothing, I did an interesting exercise recently, checking boxofficemojo for how many weeks the top movie was a superhero movie, from 2010 to mid-2023. Here’s what I found:
3 – 6 – 7 – 6 – 9 – 4 – 13 – 12 – 16 – 16 – 3 – 14 – 21 – 9
The crazy thing is how many different superhero movies held the spot in that 2016-2019 stretch. But I really don’t think of today as a superhero-friendly market, and this year we’ve had two weeks of Ant-Man, one of Shazam, two of Guardians 3, and then June was dominated by the Spider-Verse, only losing out one week to The Flash.Report
I’ve seen theories that Barbie will take over the summer.
If so, you should get prepare yourself for Pinky (2029) writing something like “Apropos of nothing, I did an interesting exercise recently, checking boxofficemojo for how many weeks the top movie was a GenX toy movie, from mid-2023 to 2029…”Report
The RedLetterMedia guys have argued that Star Wars and Ghostbusters nostalgia is about the toys, not the movies. And there are the Toy Story and Transformers franchises, and even a Battleship movie, and four Lego movies. With the writers’ strike putting Hollywood on hold, someone’s probably digging through old scripts and looking at Magic Eight Ball: The Motion Picture.Report
Lizzie, Henry, Homer, and Harry.
This is a world of hunger.
And they are hippos.Report
Dwayne
“The Rock”
Johnson
is…
Wooly WillyReport
It turns out that the photos were in fact from the Snow White production, but were using stand-ins for Snow White and one of the not-dwarves.Report
“When I said that they were fake and not from our production, I was using a very narrow definition of ‘our’.”Report
Listen, we all know it’s going to be bad in any number of ways, let’s at least wait for the release so we can mock the final product rather than the hypothetical.Report
Well, what’s crazy is that, for a minute there, the attack was “here’s some pictures” and the defense has evolved from “no, they aren’t!” to “those are stand-ins!”
I went through and watched what trailers were available out there and, as far as I can tell, there ain’t no dwarves visible yet. The emphasis is on the queen and the prince and the apple.
I used to think that they were keeping that in their back pocket because they wanted the big reveal to be “special” and keeping them hidden would be part of the build-up of excitement to release day.Report
Per google, there will be no dwarves in this version. I will let you follow those bread crumbs. We will have to see if it’s true.Report
The big scenes from the original are… off the top of my head… the awesome mirror, the evil queen becoming an old crone, the “Whistle While You Work” song, and the crown jewel is the scene where everybody is dancing.
I just rewatched it. Here:
Now that’s a fun scene and I imagine that folks watching it way back when had their jaws on the floor. It’s absolutely delightful and magical and I was smiling even though I’ve seen it a half dozen times.
Will this movie capture something as magical as that?
Lemme tell ya: I ain’t seen no magical clips from the live-action Little Mermaid floating around the twitters with a breathlessly delighted “YOU HAVE TO WATCH THIS SCENE!”
Just the one with Flounder. And the “you have to see this” was not celebrating the scene.
I’m not expecting to see scenes from Snow White (2024) showing up on Twitter with people breathlessly telling me that, seriously, I need to watch this movie.
I’ll keep an eye out, though.Report
Yea, there’s always been a certain cynicism to these things in the very general and aggregate sense that if the studios don’t make money they go out of business. However that was counter balanced with the ancient wisdom that the best way to ensure that doesn’t happen is to legitimately delight people, and in particular children, with something of a very high quality that they haven’t seen before and others, even really talented others, don’t ever seem able to duplicate. Like, the existence of Don Bluth and his perennial also rans during the 80s and 90s, including the more successful ones, are a testament to the heights Disney has been able to sporadically hit. Many in my age group have fond and/or frightening memories of the Land Before Time or All Dogs Go to Heaven but no one mistakes them for classics.
Now the cynicism is definitely still there but they’ve replaced the delight with a combination of cashing in on past successes and at times neurotic defensiveness. I mean, I can’t imagine I’m the only one that gets the sense that there are a bunch of people at Disney that are downright embarrassed about creating some of the coolest works of art in modern history. Which is insane. Anyway suffice to say I think you’re right, and there is absolutely zero chance people will think of Snow White (2024) in remotely the positive way they do Snow White (1937).Report
No no, I’m dying to know why a single picture tells us that the movie is going to be terrible.
I keep looking at the picture to figure out what is outrageous about and can’t seem to figure it out. There must be something about the picture that is offensive, but I just can’t put my finger on it.
Hmm, can anyone help me out here?
Point to where in the picture the outrage is occurring.
(I’m assuming now, that this is an actual rightwing freakout, not something a liberal cobbled together as satire, ala Will’s post about employers.)Report
I mean, none of the live action remakes have been good. Remakes of classics almost never live up. I thought that was conventional wisdom.Report
That may be your objection.
But the objection cited is about something else entirely.
Can someone here spell it out?Report
Well to be clear I didn’t object I predicted it’s going to be bad. Part of it I do think will likely be due to attempts to conform to some ill conceived political and/or identitarian orthodoxy but that will hardly be the sum total of the badness.
*SPOILER BELOW*
For example, we streamed the Little Mermaid the other day and it was terrible primarily because of the inexplicable decision to give Ariel amnesia. I’m not sure if this was because there was some kind of squeamishness about her goal being to win the prince or if it was an attempt to change it up just to change it up. In either case the result was to rob the main character of motivation and without the motivation there was basically no plot.Report
Eh, to be quite honest, the whole “you don’t like this low-effort insulting crap because it has a black person in it!” argument doesn’t really work anymore.
I mean, I understand why studios have to keep going back to that particular well, but “the dog isn’t eating the dog food because the dog is *RACIST*” works the first time, maybe the second time…
But, eventually, the CEO of Purina is going to want a food engineer who makes food that the dog will actually eat over food that dogs would like, if they were less racist.
“The problem is the CONSUMER!” may very well be true.
But the goal is to get the consumer to buy the product.
I mean… do these shots make *YOU* want to buy tickets on your phone, show up 5 minutes early, buy popcorn and have the touchscreen ask you if you want to leave a tip, and then sit in a chair through 25 minutes of previews to get to the movie that has these stand-ins?
“I can wait for streaming” is the best I could possibly do after reading that the company denied these photos were theirs and then grumpily admitted that, sure, it’s theirs but these people are STAND INS.Report
Uh huh.
So your objection is that actually its about ethics in cinema criticism. No, nothing whatsoever to do with political correctness or multiculturalism or wokism, uh uh, no sir, not at all.
Can you explain what it is about the photo that convinced you it is a bad movie?Report
No, Chip. I have no “objection”.
It’s more of an “lol” (lowercase) or, perhaps, a snort.
“Can you explain what it is about the photo that convinced you it is a bad movie?”
Bad? Good? You can’t really argue matters of taste.
One thing that did set off a flag for me was that Disney initially denied that the photos were related to their film.
Here, I’ll copy and paste this again:
And it comes out that the spokesperson was *LYING*?!?
Holy cow. That tells me that the spokespeople feel like they have to lie about the movie.
And *THAT* tells me that the movie will not make a lot of money.
Maybe it’ll be a masterpiece, of course.
I imagine that, if you see it, you’ll let us know.Report
Lets probe this a bit.
It came to your attention that some photos were leaked and some people somewhere raised objections.
What were the objections to the photos? Does the Daily Mail article that you linked to offer us any clues?
I’m not asking it you object- you are clear that you have no objections to the movie- but can you tell us what the objections are, by these other people?
I mean, you say, and here let me cut and paste- that “Those photos going viral is a pretty decent anti-campaign against Disney.”
Why? Why are the photos a decent anti-campaign?Report
What I thought was notable was in my original comment.
Why are the photos a decent anti-campaign?
I imagine for the same reasons that the spokesperson lied about them.
“Well, why would the spokesperson lie?”, is the next question that you could use to corner me, I imagine.Report
Why are a bunch of grown men arguing about Snow White?Report
Well, it started with my observation that someone out there was showing off “fake” pictures from the upcoming Snow White movie and how this “leak” was intended to do harm to Disney.
Which I thought was interesting!
But now it’s devolved into “you should want to consume this product that I probably won’t consume” part eighty-one-million-something.
And I am *ALWAYS* down to argue whether or not I should like something.Report
“Know when to walk away, know when to run.”Report
Would you like me to cut and paste parts of the article which might help us figure out what was objectionable?Report
Only if you pledge to go see this film in the theater.
And I *WILL* remember to ask you about it.Report
You can understand now, just from this brief exchange why we say that the word “Woke” is really just a synonym for “Black” and that objections to wokism and political correctness is really just veiled racism/misogyny/bigotry?
You can see that now, right?
I’m not asking you to agree with it, but to understand how a lot of people can reasonably arrive at that conclusion.Report
ctrl-F
“woke”
Huh, it only shows up in your comment.
In any case, let’s assume that what you are saying is true.
If what you are saying is true, would it be possible to submit low-effort crap and accuse anyone who doesn’t like it as being “anti-woke” instead of “anti-low-effort crap”?
Because, lemme tell ya, I have definitely seen some seriously awful media that shoveled on the “woke” crap and accused anybody of not liking the media as being against the “woke” and not against the “crap”.Report
Anyone can accuse anyone of anything, but that doesn’t mean it will stick.
Remember my first comment was that I couldn’t tell if this was a parody of rightwing freakout or the real thing?
The Daily Mail article is like if George Soros were to engineer something in his secret lair under a volcano:
“Mr. Soros, we have a diabolical plan to make conservatives look like petty, thin skinned racists. We will plant a story about a reboot of Snow White, but- get this- Snow White isn’t white! And the dwarves are all just assorted sizes and genders and ethnicities, and who knows, maybe gender fluid to boot.
This will provoke conservatives into crapping their pants and whining online about political correctness and wokism and threatening boycotts of the movie.”
“Brilliant, but don’t you think its a bit, y’know, over the top like a rejected Colbert Report sketch?”
“No sir. We have already pulled the trigger, and it is proceeding beautifully. First the Daily Mail, then we expect to see it pop up on Tucker Carlson’s feed, then retweeted by Elon Musk and finally Ron DeSantis’s stump speeches.
The pinnacle will be an hourlong speech by Donald Trump where he rants about big husky men with tears in their eyes asking him about the historical accuracy of Dopey’s sexual orientation.”Report
It’s weird that Disney responded by saying “THAT’S NOT A REAL PICTURE!” instead of “We’re making art for children of all ages and, most importantly, all skin tones. If you’re less likely to want to see this film because of an out-of-context picture taken of stand-ins, perhaps you should ask yourself why.”
As it is, they denied that it was representative of anything.
Why in the hell would they deny that it was representative of anything?
Oh, Chip. I never noticed where you said whether you intended to spend $30 and 3 hours out of your weekend to go see this when it comes out.
Do you intend to see it?Report
DARVO is a weak rejoinder.
Again, just imagine how a normal, reasonable person would view the Daily Mail article.
Would they really think it is Disney who comes off looking bad?
Really?Report
I imagine that a normal, reasonable person would view the Daily Mail article, look at the pictures, and say “Jeez… friggin’ Disney has decided that they want to lose even more money” instead of something about “The Daily Mail is truly an unethical journalism outlet.”
I mean, you’re one of the pro-woke people on the board.
AND YOU CAN’T EVEN SAY THAT *YOU* WANT TO SEE THIS FRIGGIN MOVIE!!!
If the people most inclined to defend the movie aren’t even inclined to see it… dang.
This movie is going to lose money.Report
My “I don’t like the look of this movie’s cast” tee shirt has people asking a lot of questions answered by my shirt.Report
I think you’re reading too much into this.
It is *EXCEPTIONALLY* easy to not see a movie. I’m not watching thousands of movies RIGHT NOW.
What movies have to do is work to get you, yes you, to buy a ticket.
And these photos have not done that work.
Heck, I can’t even get you to say that you’ll buy a ticket while you’re busy pointing out that people who aren’t inclined to see this movie are problematic.
Heck, I thought you’d be able to throw together something like “Eh, I don’t tend to gravitate toward kid movies but Disney puts out quality pretty consistently and, not to get all male gazey, but Gal Gadot and Rachel Zegler are both pretty easy on the eyes and it might be nice to spend an hour or so looking at them. I saw the original Snow White in the theater, you know. Mom took us to a showing back when Disney still put old releases out in the theaters before everybody had a VCR. I’ve got fond memories of seeing that and so of course I want to see what Disney Magic can do!”
See? Something like that.
But we both know that you aren’t inspired to buy a ticket. I look at those pictures and think “Man… even the defenders of Disney aren’t going to buy a ticket to this.”
I don’t blame them.Report
Another canary falls off its perch:
AAA pulls back from offering insurance in Florida, following Farmers
AAA will not renew the auto and home insurance policies for some customers in Florida, joining a growing list of insurers exiting the Sunshine State amid a growing risk of natural disasters.
“Unfortunately, Florida’s insurance market has become challenging in recent years,” the company said in a statement emailed to CBS MoneyWatch. “Last year’s catastrophic hurricane season contributed to an unprecedented rise in reinsurance rates, making it more costly for insurance companies to operate.”
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/aaa-insurance-florida-crisis-farmers/Report
This is one heck of a massive correction.
Could government leadership have done something, anything, to prevent it from happening?Report
Yes.
If you read the advice of scientists and climatologists for the past several decades you will get a good comprehensive list of the various things political leaders could have done to prevent this.Report
Oh, “several decades”.
That’s a great way to pull a “BSDI”. I was hoping for a way to pin this on DeSeyss-Inquart.Report
Oh, a review of climate change debate over the years will reveal that this is definitely not BSDI, and in fact falls along a very partisan divide.
You could even resurrect OT discussions about it. But I would understand if you don’t want to.Report
I’ll probably just ask people to link to them.Report
Note the “some,” which was irresponsibly omitted from the headline. Later in the article, AAA says “a small percentage” of Florida customers will be impacted.
I’m curious as to why they would simply stop offering insurance, rather than raising rates. Are there price controls that prevent them from raising rates to levels where it would be worth offering insurance, or is disaster really so likely that it can’t be offered at any affordable rate?Report
Premium increases have to be approved by the Florida Office of Insurance Regulation. Are there any states where property insurance rates aren’t subject to some form of state review?
From what I have read, Florida’s immediate crisis is being driven by reinsurance-related problems.Report
RFK Jr. argues that COVID-19 was bioengineered to target White and Black people but spare Ashkenazi Jews.
https://www.nationalreview.com/news/rfk-jr-argues-covid-19-potentially-engineered-to-attack-caucasian-and-black-people/Report
Why in the hell would the Chinese agree to *THAT*?Report
Future use of the space lasers?Report
https://twitter.com/oliver_drk/status/1680201059455713282?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1680201059455713282%7Ctwgr%5E68893c1aaaeb4dbff332337626663e274cdc5e62%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fdisqus.com%2Fembed%2Fcomments%2F%3Fbase%3Ddefaultf%3Dlawyersgunsmoneyblog-comt_i%3D13425920https3A2F2Fwww.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com2F3Fp3D134259t_u%3Dhttps3A2F2Fwww.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com2F20232F072Frfk-jr-just-asking-questionst_e%3DRFK20Jr.20just20asking20questionst_d%3DRFK20Jr.20just20asking20questions20-20Lawyers2C20Guns202620Moneyt_t%3DRFK20Jr.20just20asking20questionss_o%3Ddescversion%3D3c00c65811f2cec80a8903c739975872Report
The sick thing is, as I’m watching that, I’m thinking “he’s about average”. You put him on stage with Biden and Trump, he’s comparable in presentation and probably in ideas.Report
Some ideas are so stupid that only intellectuals believe them.
Report
To be fair, they didn’t just start doing this, they’ve been cutting advanced math since 2017. The issue is that before this year they were only cutting the classes that white and Asian kids took, but now they’re cutting the classes that everybody took.Report