Open Mic for the week of 11/27/2023
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.
Walt Disney released an SEC report.
Page 18 contains this interesting section:
“Further, consumers’ perceptions of our position on matters of public interest, including our efforts to achieve certain of our environmental and social goals, often differ widely and present risks to our reputation and brands.”
In the past, when we’ve had discussions of people no longer consuming products, it’s devolved into accusations against the people no longer consuming the products.
I’m guessing that we are nowhere near unique in this.
This little nugget in the SEC report seems to hint that, maybe, they’re considering going a different direction than blaming the people who used to consume the product but now no longer consume the product or consume the product less.Report
I saw this a while ago. While I don’t go see movies much in the theatre, I have seen a lot of the Marvel movies on TV, and it’s generally on point. Scroll to the 3 minute mark for a breakdown on why Disney may be having some problems-at least with The Marvels. So, here’s an idea….make good movies that don’t insult your intelligence.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NnFqai4EGhE&ab_channel=TheCriticalDrinkerReport
Disney has spend around $1 billion this year on Quantumania, The Little Mermaid, Indy 5, and The Marvels, and that’s not counting advertising (which is often nearly 1:1). Those four didn’t make a $1 billion so far. I don’t think they have a single healthy franchise other than Avatar, which is currently a money-maker but not a game-changer. Maybe Pixar could squeeze out another sequel – its biggest hits in the past 5 years were Toy Story 4 and The Incredibles 2.Report
Disney’s global box office for 2023 (from IMDb): Guardians of the Galaxy v3, $845M; Little Mermaid, $570M; Quantumania, $476M; Dial of Destiny, $383M; Elemental, $495M; The Marvels, $189M. Call it $3B. I have no idea what Disney’s share of the global box office is.Report
I think that part of the issue is 2019.
And, a little bit later in the story:
They were on top of the world.
Regression to the mean isn’t particularly surprising. We can talk all day about how Avengers: Endgame was a magnificent capstone for a story that started 11 years before and that’s amazing. You’d have to be crazy to think that 2020 could have been better even without a global pandemic.
But here we are. Looking at 2023. It wouldn’t be surprising that the executive types are looking at 2023 through the lens of 2019.Report
Good catch. I was looking at domestic. Those 6 movies cost about $1.5 billion. Figure advertising was about that much, and then the studio has to share revenue with the theaters, so most people figure a movie has to make 2.5x its original cost to be profitable (and studio financials are both obscure and padded). So those 6 may have netted a $1 billion loss, at least for release. Adding in intellectual property rights, along with the toys and soundtracks, and they may ultimately break even. But it’s hard to see an Indy 6, Guardians 4, or Incredibles 3.Report
In that vein, CNBC Reporter Alex Sherman reports:
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Secretive White House Surveillance Program Gives Cops Access to Trillions of US Phone Records
https://www.wired.com/story/hemisphere-das-white-house-surveillance-trillions-us-call-records/
“According to the letter, a surveillance program now known as Data Analytical Services (DAS) has for more than a decade allowed federal, state, and local law enforcement agencies to mine the details of Americans’ calls, analyzing the phone records of countless people who are not suspected of any crime, including victims. Using a technique known as chain analysis, the program targets not only those in direct phone contact with a criminal suspect but anyone with whom those individuals have been in contact as well.”
Well, I’m surprised…..not.Report
Its just a down stream revelation of the warrantless wire tapping authorized under the original Patriot Act back in GWB days . . . .Report
Things that make you say “hmmm”.Report
This story doesn’t make me say hum at all. Some of my earliest blog-o-sphere work (very pre OT) was on this vary topic and I railed (as did a good many liberals) about the Pandora’s box this was opening. We were told that the GWOT REQUIRED this sort of response, and it would only be used against the “bad” people. I didn’t believe it then, nor do I believe it now. Problem is we are dialing in on 20 years of this program and its predecessors being in existence. Which tells me its as close to permanent as anything in the federal sphere is.Report
Agreed, and I opposed it then and do so now, but I think it’s important to remind folks of what was done in the past if only to rebut “oh but they’d never do something like that.”.Report
Home school diplomas for sale in Louisiana. No need to attend classes. Time for the Federal government to smash down good and hard with the full force of the state against this practice.
https://projects.apnews.com/features/2023/missing-students-unapproved-schools/index.htmlReport
My home state . . . and House Speaker Mike Johnson’s as well . . .
the feds have no real dog in this fight unfortunately. As education policy is a state by state decision, and as Louisiana has been slowly squeezing public schools because they have the audacity to use white people’s tax money to educate black people, this is a very predictable outcome. The best enforcement mechanism to correct this would be college refusing admissions on the basis of fraudulent documents, and employers refusing to hire for the same reason. I’m doubtful that will occur however.Report
State tests for state-approved diplomas, no tests for unapproved diplomas. Calling an unapproved diploma “approved” is considered fraud. That sounds right to me. This doesn’t even sound like “homeschooling”, particularly.
A am pretty top-down on education reform, however. I think we need a national GED. An employer can’t afford to gamble on whether a school – approved or not – or homeschool has done its job. And since lower-qualification positions are so important for potentially disadvantaged people, we need a way to convey trustworthiness in a certification.Report
State regulations differ by state… so I can’t exactly say what’s going on in LA… but as a general rule, there isn’t really a concept of a ‘Homeschool Diploma’ that you could sell. None of my kids have a (HS) diploma.
Here’s what the article is specifically talking about:
“Unlike public schools, formal homeschooling programs or traditional private schools, nearly 9,000 private schools in Louisiana don’t need state approval to grant degrees. Nearly every one of those unapproved schools was created to serve a single homeschooling family, but some have buildings, classrooms, teachers and dozens of students.”
It seems, rather, that some folks are creating Private Schools in order to grant a degree. It’s a Private School loophole to deal with the fact that there isn’t really a degree that is conferred for homeschooling.
For example, this is the VA Dept of Ed policy on granting diplomas:
“Typically, school boards do not award diplomas to students who are not enrolled in public schools under their supervision. Therefore, students taught at home may not receive diplomas unless those students are enrolled in a correspondence program or other program that awards a diploma or other exiting credential.
Neither VDOE nor public school divisions maintain any academic records, such as transcripts or diploma status, for students who have been home schooled. Thus VDOE cannot verify a home schooled student’s high school graduation status for military recruiters, colleges, universities, technical schools, employers, or any other entity.”
Which is why we ‘close the loop’ by having our kids attend Community College and basically get a 5-yr High-School Associate’s Degree… or just apply to College as a Home schooled student — and the Colleges verify what information they want to accept or not.
There are better ways to open-up educational pathways … I have lots of ideas that would re-invigorate public and communal education, if not the current broken institutions we have — but I prefer incremental improvements with rational actors rather than radical ‘smash them all and let the DOE sort them out’ approaches.Report
I suspect if you trace this back in Louisiana far enough in time, you will see this relating quite strongly to the white flight after desegregation in the 980’s, and further still back tot he segregation academies that sprang up in the 1960’s to fight back against the civil rights movement.Report
Earlier than that. First half of the 1970s saw a whole lot of restrictions on annexation in the Midwest and Near West states. The basic model was that big cities couldn’t annex across county lines without permission of the annexed area. In Michigan it was specifically to keep Detroit from annexing into Oakland County, where white-collar parts of the auto industry moved*. In Nebraska, it was specifically to keep Omaha from annexing into the rapidly growing suburbs to the south. In Colorado, the Poundstone amendment said that any “city and county” — at that time only Denver — was restricted to keep them out of the big western suburbs.
Overall, the geography is interesting. Eg, St. Louis collapsed and has never recovered. Kansas City never fell as far and has come back.
* Still one of the largest global concentrations of high end automotive engineering talent.Report
I’m pretty sure you’d be conflating unrelated issues with regard this particular situation regarding homeschoolers using a private school diploma loophole.
It’s not solving for racism, it’s solving for credentialism.Report
I would greatly appreciate it if you would not tell me about my lived experiences in the state in question, and what conclusions I may or may not draw from those experiences. Unless you care to tell me what parish you grew up in and which school system you graduated from. Whether you like or agree with my conclusions or not, as a native of Louisiana and a graduate of its public schools in the decade after court ordered desegregation I may actually know more then you do about why thigs there are the way they are.Report
You should describe your experiences then, and we can see if they’re relevant.Report
“It seems, rather, that some folks are creating Private Schools in order to grant a degree. It’s a Private School loophole to deal with the fact that there isn’t really a degree that is conferred for homeschooling.”
The article says that there is an option for official diplomas for homeschooled students in Louisiana:
“Parents who want their child to receive a state-recognized high school diploma can apply for the official home study program. They must submit documentation such as test scores or copies of the student’s work to show their child has received 180 days of schooling at the same quality as a public school’s. The state-recognized diploma is more widely accepted by colleges and allows students to qualify for a popular in-state scholarship program.”
If there’s a loophole, I think it’s to trick parents / students / institutions into thinking that a real diploma has been granted when it hasn’t. I mean, if you want to send me $25 I’ll send you a Pinky’s Certification of Flawless Genius, but I’m going to make sure it says clearly “Not An Official Diploma” so I won’t get arrested.Report
Sure, as I mentioned, each state has all sorts of variations… Virginia (for a while anyway) had a program where you could plop a kid in front of a screen for the requisite number of hours each week/month/year and as long as all the hours were accounted for and were equal to the number of hours required for being in a public school… you could get a Virginia ‘homeschool’ program that would keep you sort of in the Public System.
But I don’t know anyone who ever did that — for obvious reasons.
What seems to be happening is that there was an easier way to grant a diploma to your kid that was easy enough for 9,000 +/- families to go that route.
The reason I call it a loophole is that usually there’s a pretty simple requirement to document the activity in the ‘school’ related to the child… which the article implies isn’t happening. I mean, I have to keep records of my own children’s education… so it’s odd if I was granted the ability to confer a diploma without proof of any sort of educational activities.
But yeah, every state has different requirements… some better, some worse for homeschooling… but this issue doesn’t strike me as a key problem — more of an accident of not paying attention to shifting assumptions regarding HS diplomas.Report
If we’re going to be graduating functionally illiterate people, the *STATE* should be getting that money!Report
Won’t somebody think of the teachers’ unions?Report
Who gets the money if they graduate innumerate people?Report
Teachers, administrators, groundskeepers and custodial, superintendents… the list probably goes on for a while.Report
No one can tell. (Sorry, I know it was obvious.)Report
Re: Socialized Medicine.
It wasn’t *THAT* long ago that this would have been a strawman:
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I mentioned the other day that the end of the Cold War settled several disputed issues and placed them beyond debate.
One was to confirm that the optimum outcome for society is to have regulated markets with a robust safety net.
Contained within that is the fact that a robust safety net includes a highly socialized system of Healthcare.
Even accepting this story, systems like Canada’s provide a superior outcome for its citizens than the American one does.Report
American parent takes kid to an emergency room after the kid has an accident at soccer practice because the kid was hit by a ball to make sure the kid does not have a fractured arm or leg, the independent emergency room doctors’ group is not in network, parent gets it with a 35K bill.Report
Venezuela apparently wants to invade Guyana.
Guyana, you see, has oil.Report
Oil as a reason may be relatively new, but the land claim goes back a couple hundred years.MReport
The article about it gets into that, a little.
Slowly and then all at once.Report
Education Secretary Cardona: “I think it was President Reagan who said, ‘We’re from the government. We’re here to help.'”
https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/columnist/2023/11/29/reagan-misquote-education-secretary-biden-administration-overreach/71727121007/Report
Random observation: I kind of like the overall GOP debate structure: have many debates (getting the candidates and the party brand on TV and out to the public), eliminating candidates one by one, based on polling and fundraising, until there’s only a small number left. Before the primaries. This is a good strategy for making primaries less bruising and disunifying and producing a candidate who will be most likely to appeal to the mainstream. It’s too bad that Trump isn’t playing ball with it, but Trump disrupts everything.
The Democrats don’t have a Trump problem (or rather, they don’t have the same kind of Trump problem mainstream Republicans do). I think I’d like to see the Democrats adopt a similar sort of pre-primary debate regimen in 2028.Report
This article from Vox on the regressive dating advice you can find on TikTok basically speaks a lot about the difference between how college educated liberals see the world and how nearly everybody else sees the world. I agree with Vox’s overall criticism but there are lots of people who believe this regressive dating advice is absolutely correct and hold to it very dearly. Possibly way more people than the ones who hold progressive relationship beliefs even if only dealing with the West.
https://www.vox.com/culture/23978325/dating-advice-shera-seven-tiktok-sprinkle-sprinkleReport
It’s an interesting article. I really liked the observation that dating apps have “gamified” dating. I think a lot of online behaviour is gamified. I was thinking about something similar on the Celebrity Death thread, but without that great word.
As for the latest wave of dating advice, I don’t think it’s regressive exactly. It’s more like the cheat codes for playing the game under feminist rules, maybe with some “how to find the right person to marry” mixed in. But the core feminist idea is that the male and female don’t complete each other. Regressive would be compatibility and morality. The Tate stuff is a natural result of an iterative game, although there’s a contrary force within most of us that aspires to a happy life married.
One other thing the article nailed was at the end. Why do people really listen to this stuff? Mostly bored.Report
In addition to “gamification” I think “cheat code” is a great term also.
That’s what struck me, is the way all the advice is in the vein of “Try this One Weird Trick” to get a happy life.
I remember reading an essay about the magical thinking of some young women regarding their wedding- that they grew fanatical about making the One Special Day perfect, convinced that if that day were perfect, the marriage itself would be perfect as well, and conversely, if the cake fell over or the doves didn’t fly out as planned, the marriage was ruined.Report
Regressive? Not sure about that. I’ve gotten some good advice from some content, which I used very effectively, specifically about establishing boundaries about what a woman has input on in my life. It was very effective.Report
Headline of the Day: FBI agent carjacked in DC, police say
Unfortunately, the vehicle was also carrying some to-be-declassified documents about the Kennedy assassination. These documents were not recovered.Report
Dumb question. Does this count as ending the ceasefire:
Shooting in Jerusalem Kills at Least 3 People, Israeli Officials SayReport
It depends on what both sides agree to call it.Report
Well, it looks like both sides have agreed that it’s not going to trigger the end of the ceasefire. Qatar’s foreign ministry has said that we’re going to get another day of the ceasefire.Report
narrator voice: while this incident did not immediately end the ceasefire, it did end the next day as Hamas failed to release more hostages and resumed rocket attacks on Israel.Report
It happens in threes.
Rosalynn Carter.
Henry Kissinger.
Shane McGowan.Report
LOLReport
Sandra Day O’ConnorReport
Gag order restored in Trump’s NY civil case:
https://www.aol.com/news/appeals-court-reinstates-gag-order-160547659.htmlReport
This is a particularly wild contrast:
Trump attorney Christopher Kise called it “a tragic day for the rule of law.” Steven Cheung, a spokesperson for Trump’s 2024 presidential campaign, complained that the order was “nothing but attempted election interference, which is failing terribly.”
Engoron imposed the gag order Oct. 3 after Trump posted a derogatory comment about the judge’s law clerk to social media. The post, which included a baseless allegation about the clerk’s personal life, came the second day of the trial in New York Attorney General Letitia James’ lawsuit.
It actually still surprises me how little political price Trump pays for the way the care and feeding of his own ego is his top priority, both when campaigning and (even worse) when in office.Report
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/30/world/middleeast/israel-hamas-attack-intelligence.html
Yikes. This could spell the end for Bibi.Report
right, just like Bush knew about 9/11 and let it happen, and Johnson knew about Oswald and let it happen, and Roosevelt knew about Pearl Harbor and let it happen…Report
Did you read the article? If so, why do you dismiss the evidence pointing towards Israel’s knowledge of the plan?Report
Yeah, and I wrote what I wrote.Report
like, there’s a difference between “there was credible intelligence that Hamas was moving men and material into place to conduct an attack” and “they knew that These Exact Activities were going to occur on This Actual Day And Time, and intentionally chose to not react”Report
Yes this looks basically like hindsight bias. It’s like when you watch a murder mystery and they reveal whodunnit, you react with “I knew it!!” because of all the clues pointing to that person – but there were also clues pointing to other people, so you didnt know which information was salient and which wasn’t until after the fact.
Still, it doesn’t mean there won’t be fallout – the criticism may in fact be unfair but the voters may not see it that way.Report
Those goal posts feel light to you?Report
Haven’t moved a thing. Ain’t my fault your brain shuts down when you encounter disagreement and you just see other people as screaming blurs.Report
He dismisses it because he believes that so many other equally or more powerful players in so many other nations have done this that it doesn’t matter. And because there was no fallout for those others their should be no fall out in Israel. But he wants to appear sophisticated and trollish so he writes obtusely.Report
So you think Israeli politics plays by the same rules American politics does? Fascinating.Report
Since this is the newest top-level comment on the Middle East, I’ll put this here. For other reasons I was looking at the very beginning of the site’s post/comment database. Here’s the first paragraph from the oldest comment still in there:
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Yet another stochastic terror attack:
Ex-Marine pleads guilty to firebombing Planned Parenthood in Costa Mesa
A former US Marine pleaded guilty in federal court on Thursday, Nov. 30 to firebombing a Planned Parenthood clinic in Costa Mesa in 2022.
Chance Brannon, 24, of San Juan Capistrano, who was an active-duty Marine stationed at Camp Pendleton at the time of the crime, also said he made plans for additional attacks on a second Planned Parenthood clinic, a Southern California Edison substation, and an LGBTQ pride night celebration at Dodger Stadium, the U.S. Attorney’s Office said in a statement.
https://www.ocregister.com/2023/11/30/ex-marine-pleads-guilty-to-firebombing-planned-parenthood-in-costa-mesa/Report
Not surprisingly Hamas engaged in a systematic campaign to rape Israeli women it held and is holding in captivity. This is not going to make arguments that Israel should wage war against Hamas less hard. That a lot of the loudest critics of Israel in the war against Hamas are going to be silent about this and seem to conveniently forget what Hamas did is not going to help the Palestinians either. They can’t even engage in some ritual denunciation.
https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2023-11-30/ty-article-magazine/.highlight/hamas-campaign-of-rape-against-israeli-women-is-revealed-testimony-after-testimony/0000018c-2144-da36-a1de-6767dac90000Report
Tom’s Hardware reviewed the available information about China’s new exaflop super computer. An exaflop is a billion billion double-precision floating-point operations per second. This is one of the technologies that the US restrictions on exports is supposed to keep China from achieving. China designed and fabricated the integrated circuits for the machine in-country. Granted that the tech is not bleeding edge (14nm), and consumes more energy both for processing and cooling than supercomputers based on TSMC and Intel parts, but it works.Report
If Electric Cars Were Honest
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zRUg2NXmLd0&ab_channel=HonestAds
I can’t disagree.Report