As is so often the case, I am reminded of Vonnegut:
“As for literary criticism in general: I have long felt that any reviewer who expresses rage and loathing for a novel or a play or a poem is preposterous. He or she is like a person who has put on full armor and attacked a hot fudge sundae or a banana split.”
Quickly! Suit up! You've got to defend that hot fudge sundae against the women attacking it!
If they don’t want to see it for some other reason, it’s not relevant to what I’m saying, no matter how much you try to muddy the water by bringing it up.
Do you think that automatically categorizing people who are expressing disappointment that it's not Adam Driver are harboring some secret racism?
Because that's how some folks are spinning it, you see.
Hell, some folks are spinning not wanting to see the show at all as being racist against the casting of Snape.
And, get this, this isn't the first time this particular game has been played. Ghostbusters 2016, the remake of Charlie's Angels... there's a *LOT* of people who argued that people who didn't want to see their slop were, in fact, sexist or racist or whathaveyou.
And now we've got a brand new controversy due to the casting of Snape.
"if they are upset, or won’t see it, because an actor cast in the movie is black, then they’re racist, by definition"
As if that's the first time we've seen this game played instead of the umpteenth this decade.
If someone says "Man, I wish they got Adam Driver... now I'm not interested in the show...", can we accuse them of being secretly racist?
Oooh! If they claim that Rowling is transphobic, can I accuse them of rainbow-washing their racism?
"If you want to beat around that bush, feel free, but that’s the only bush I’m talking about."
It's an entertainment product in a marketplace that is oversaturated with entertainment products.
Feeling even the slightest of "ick"s is sufficient reason to watch Y instead of X for any Y and any X.
And accusing people of an "ism" or a "phobia" for chosing something, anything!, else in an oversaturated marketplace is a transparent attempt to inject a moral objection to a matter of taste and, get this, it trivializes the moral objection in the same way that calling wolf does.
Oh, you wanted Adam Driver to play Snape? That's racist.
They're busy screaming about how it should have been Adam Driver. "ADAM DRIVER WAS RIGHT THERE!"
Seriously, he was trending for two days on Twitter.
I, personally, am curious as to how they're going to handle James bullying Snape in high school or exploring how Lily didn't want to date Snape.
To be honest, I'm less expecting "I REFUSE TO WATCH THIS BECAUSE A BLACK ACTOR WAS CAST!" and more expecting a "Meh. Not for me..." response.
At which point the studios will pull a good, old-fashioned "YOU ONLY THINK IT WASN'T FOR YOU BECAUSE WE CAST A BLACK GUY!" and we can have an argument over the dark and unsettling reasons that other people aren't consuming a show that we ourselves also aren't consuming.
Sure. We can immediately talk about how the fans of the franchise are bad people.
I mean, they're fans of something created by JK Rowling so that goes without saying but now we can *REALLY* lean into how they shouldn't care about this silly thing.
"Why do you care? This is stupid and what you like is stupid. Why do you care?"
Maybe we can get the people actually creating the show to ask that.
Man, it really sucks that this precedent has been set, then.
I mean, I'd have to argue for saying that it's okay to do this stuff in front of a group of folks who are in charge of disbursing Federal Funds.
And, lemme tell ya, after the last decade or so, I'm not sure that the people who would be put in charge of arguing that this stuff should obviously be okay have the rhetorical chops to pull it off.
But I'd love to see them try and see what policies they institute after testifying that they may find such speech distasteful but college is supposed to be a hotbed of free speech activity where students will quite regularly experience speech that some might say is unpleasant.
I saw that "Whistle While You Work", a cheery song where Snow White cleans up the house while the guys are at work turned into a cheery song where she teaches the guys how to do their own housecleaning.
"SOMEONE STOLE OUR DISHES!"
"They ain't stole, they're hid in the cupboard."
Don't forget the people who are refusing to see it because Gal Gadot is in it! Anti-semitism has an impact too!
"It cheapens the accusation of anti-semitism to conflate it with not wanting to see a movie because someone who supports genocide against indigenous people is in it."
"Too late. Anti-semitism. Now you have to take the charge seriously."
2025-03-07 18:03:43
Bipedal humanoid robots are being allowed to run in a half marathon in Bejing.
Rules for humanoids running the Beijing Half-Marathon are announced:
⦿ Only bipedal robots (no wheels) - remote-controlled or autonomous
⦿ Height: 1.6 ft to 6.5 ft
⦿ Time limit: 3 hours and 30 minutes
⦿ 10-minute penalty for each battery swap
There was a case with UCLA where they checked for stuff like Jewish jewelry and asked people who were unwilling to denounce Israel to take the long way around but I'm sure we're in agreement that that is particularly egregious.
This is from back in 2023. (Jump down to where it says "sabotage" if you want to get straight to the thread.)
Here's one of the points I made in the middle of the thread:
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”.
I do hope that Kazzy comes back and gives a comment about how much (or whether is an option, I guess) his kiddos liked the movie.
As for my take on Ziegler, I'll take the liberty of quoting myself:
Now beauty is subjective and we shouldn’t say whether one person is more attractive than another and the very idea of a magic mirror being able to tell who is and who is not better looking than another person is silly… but I can totally see how someone might prefer to look at Gal Gadot when given the choice between Gal Gadot and Rachel Ziegler.
“So you’re saying that Rachel Ziegler is *UGLY*?!?”
“No, I’m not saying that. They’re both good looking.”
“So you agree that Rachel Ziegler is better looking but you just don’t think so because you’re racist against Latinx Actresses!”
“No, I don’t… erm… I’m not sure when we got allowed to say that one woman is better looking than another but I am saying that I understand how someone might think that Gal Gadot is better looking, in the trailer, than Rachel Ziegler is.”
“So you’re saying that Rachel Ziegler is hideous.”
“No.”
Generally when you have a protest like that, you don’t let counterprotesters in.
From what I understand, the protest wasn't a four hour thing where they had one guy give a forty minute speech to introduce a guy who gives a thirty minute speech to introduce a guy who gives a twenty minute speech to introduce a guy who comes out and speaks for ten minutes with a whole bunch of songs praising peace and justice sprinkled among the speeches but was, instead, an encampment.
If they had a four hour thing and said "no Israelites except for Black Israelites", I'm pretty sure that everybody would have rolled their eyes and gone around the long way.
Such is the nature of four hour protests.
But an encampment? Why, I'd hate to have to argue that point in front of a judge.
Are you asking for the "For Real According To A Definition That You, Personally, Use" definition or the legal one that they're going to be using as justification?
I don't think it's left v. right. It might be easier if it were.
It's elite vs. non-elite and the elite got very good at explaining that "no, this isn't a foot fault, if you'd read the rules of the game from 1927, you'd see that "the line" refers to the part of the line closest to the net and not anything having to do with paint in general, I can't believe you're using the ruleset from 1948 or, sigh, 1977. What game did you even think we were playing?"
And some of the folks responded by reading a copy of the 1927 rules *VERY* closely and others just started trying to figure out why the refs cared when they started ignoring the back of the line but not when the opponent did.
We haven't had a stupid party for a long time. The elite still thinks it's a left/right thing.
I immediately panicked when I read Phil's accusation. "Did I miss that this was satire? Am I so poisoned that I read that and thought it was real?"
I am not too proud to say that I felt relief after I spent a few moments googling and confirming that, yes, it's real.
But I had to double and triple check first because, you know... you read that and you realize that it could very well be actively making fun of how people used to talk in 2017.
Man, wouldn't *THAT* be nice? I think you're thinking of The Babylon Bee which is, indeed, satire.
The Sacramento Bee is a newspaper that has Pulitzers and everything. While you may read the above and think "Jeez Louise, that's gotta be freakin' satire" (AND I SYMPATHIZE WITH THAT KNEE JERK RESPONSE!!!), sadly, it appears to be entirely in earnest.
Who, exactly, was the audience for this conversation, anyway? Because it sure wasn’t the people of California.
I’d rather listen to Chico State frat boys debate their favorite IPA than spend a single moment listening to Newsom and Kirk.
I already know plenty of boring men who want to mansplain politics to me, thanks.
Now, I’m no fortune teller, but even I can see that Newsom’s little podcast project will soon crumble under the crushing weight of lackluster listenership — like so many other puffed-up would-be podcasters who have gone before him. I’m putting the over-under at 10 episodes. Any takers?
This podcast of Newsom’s is platforming people who make their living off of temper tantrums and mass-produced hatred.
Premise 1: You have one Third Reicher on your show and you have a Third Reich show.
Premise 2: Gavin Newsom had a Third Reicher on his show.
Conclusion: Gavin Newsom has a Third Reich show.
Now, if the conclusion is obviously false, we have a problem with one of the premises.
If the conclusion is true, we have to explore whether having a Third Reich show is enough to make the host of a Third Reich show a Nazi himself.
If it does... then the governor of California is a Nazi.
That hasn't happened since 1975.
I don't think I know anybody who is a Tateista. Like, not even on Twitter have I encountered someone who says "you gotta see this" for any reason but to (rhetorically) ask "why in the hell is this guy considered charismatic?"
Even Joe Rogan, to whom I do not subscribe, gets boosted inside of my circles to get a "you gotta watch this clip!" from time to time.
I have never seen a complimentary clip of Tate.
So maybe no problem, right? Nobody I know even listens to him.
When I was a kid, the tragedy of schism meant that baptized protestants couldn't partake of the Eucharist. I understand that the Catholic church has lightened up on that in the last decade or so.
In any case, if memory serves, there was an amount of resentment on the part of protestants in general that they couldn't partake of the Eucharist.
Lemme tell ya, anybody who showed up in the Babtist church could take a pinch of bread and a shot of grape juice even if they were Methodists.
So, at the very least, there were hard feelings on the part of those told that they were Heretics living in apostasy. This usually resulted in hammering on several of the (now moot) 95 theses.
As for the Grand Mufti declaring people heretics, the most recent example I can think of is Rushdie.
However: The goal isn't changing Tate. It's making Tate irrelevant.
"I shouldn't have to make Tate irrelevant! He should already be irrelevant!" may be a true statement but the fact that Tate is not irrelevant is a problem that won't be addressed by pointing out that he shouldn't be relevant and you shouldn't even have to explain why.
Well, the part where you say "“heresy,” however interesting to outsiders, is a matter of internal club rules and has no purchase on non- members" seems to be true for you personally but it doesn't seem to be true for others.
your panda bear contrarian can’t give a straight yes or no answer on whether I have to deal with a Leo Frank denier or other anti-Semites in good faith or if I can just dismiss them.
My argument is that you can do whatever you want and you don't have to do anything.
However, there are tradeoffs and if you don't like the tradeoff, *THAT IS NOT MY FAULT*.
And cornering me to say "oh, there aren't tradeoffs!" WILL NOT MAKE THE TRADEOFFS DISAPPEAR.
You don't seem to understand that the people who believe that Leo Frank was innocent are the people who are the Leo Frank Truthers and until you hammer that down flat you're not going to understand why you're the one who has to lift the burden.
People work hard writing an essay on the importance of a fuzz pedal for electric guitars and WHAMMO there's a link to how an Italian senator who was famous for, ahem, adult movies in the early 70s has offered Saddam Hussein sexual favors in exchange for peace.
And now the comments to this essay about the fuzz pedal has a subsection devoted to whether it's culturally insensitive to offer meaningless sex to Muslims with a subsubsection devoted to whether this has ever worked arguing against people who make jokes like "when has this ever *NOT* worked?" and the person who wrote the original essay about the fuzz pedal just wanted to talk about music, man.
If we could figure out a way for Europe to unite and create something like a common Union of some sort, maybe they could pave the way and provide an example for the rest of the world.
"This is what The Future looks like!", they could demonstrate.
I'd suggest that you'd better speak out against him and shoot his arguments down one by one by one and, if you can, make his arguments look stupid and silly.
I mean... look at the trendlines and look at what's likely to be true next year, in five years, and in ten years.
I *SERIOUSLY* think that growing flabby in your ability to argue against people with bad arguments is *NOT* in your best interests.
No, you should not treat blood libel against *ANYBODY* in good faith.
And, again, if we're thinking that there was a conspiracy against Leo Frank to convict him despite his innocence and multiple appeals that goes all the way to the Supreme Court, that makes *US* the "Truthers" and you should have a *LOT* more sympathy for people who believe in conspiracies against innocent people than you do.
I'm pretty sure that since Leo Frank's conviction has not been overturned (even after the Supreme Court declined to hear his appeal), the Truthers are the ones who say that there was a conspiracy to declare him guilty. You should use a different word.
You should not treat blood libel against anybody with good faith.
Despite how cool it would be if Christianity were the only religion with heresies, sadly, many religions have them.
Hell, there are even atheists who argue for the existence of heresies within atheism (though if you wanted to talk about post-protestantism, I'd probably concede the point even as the atheists refuse it).
But Mani took and twisted Christianity, Judaism, Buddhism, Zoroastrianism, and probably some other stuff. Er, not "twisted". "Made his own". "Forged a new path".
In any case... Heresy ain't limited to Jesus Enthusiasts.
The ABC news magazine shows “20/20” and “Nightline” are consolidating into one unit, resulting in job cuts, the people said. ABC is also eliminating the political and data-driven news site 538, which had about 15 employees.
I defended this from leftist dismissal. I would be remiss, however, not to criticize it myself.
The problem with this list is not that it's moderate. The problem is that it's midway between negative and fake. Tailgates and gun shows? You want Walz to run more pick-sixes?
The last thing Democrats need is more triangulation, more focus-grouping, more chasing the tails of half-imagined Real Americans with superficial gestures. The moderates pictured here identified half of the party's problem: passionate Dems are too far left for the country. This includes the small donors, it includes the large donors, it includes the online base, it certainly includes the non-Democrat leftists who scream that what the Dems really need is more leftism.
But there's a second half of the party's problem, and it's a half that most consultants, staffers, elected officials & party leaders can't speak to, because to speak to it would be to damn themselves: most "moderate" Democrats are fake. Kamala Harris was fake. Tim Walz was fake. Joe Biden was fakery piled upon fakery piled upon damnable fakery, and he and those close to him dragged the party to the depths while they covered up his mental decline.
The whole moderate wing of the party has committed to a vision of Electability that involves dancing around their true positions, maintaining a map of careful no-go zones and forbidden associations, and coloring precisely within focus-grouped lines before letting their progressive staffers run wild.
Who could honestly believe Harris's pandering to the center after 2020? Leftists will tell you going on stage with Liz Cheney was a bridge too far; moderates, meanwhile, can't help but notice that Cheney was trotted out without policy concessions or without serious integration, as a mascot to smile about shared love of Democracy. Please. Superficial pablum.
I've hurled plenty of invective at groups I don't identify with here, so I would be remiss not to hurl invective at my own: this is not, precisely, their fault. You cannot expect people to honestly represent ideas they don't truly believe. You can't expect them to work with people who don't want to work with them. You can't expect to sit on the outside hurling invective at a group until they bend to your preferences.
What's a winning Democratic message? It's not just "reject far-left purity testing"—though that's a good consideration! It's not just "reckon with past failures of governance and focus ruthlessly on building institutional competence"—though that, too, is welcome. The party needs people who combine the authenticity and passion of its progressive wing with the care towards the median American of its moderate wing. Specifically, it needs people who aren't trying to feel towards the positions of an imagined Median American when they speak, but people whose own Sanders-like authenticity truly resonates with the median.
It's worth keeping in mind, too, the space both to draw contrasts with MAGA and to learn from it. Trump is apathetic towards truth—be scrupulous about truth. Trump is corrupt and self-serving—root out corruption and crack down on self-serving politics. Trump is taking a burn-it-all-down approach, so focus on building it all well. So forth.
But he, like Sanders, is almost terrifyingly authentic about what he wants, and people are hungry for that. Don't run from it! When he brought people into his coalition, he made them and their supporters feel genuinely heard, handing DOGE off to Elon, the Department of Health to RFK, and the DNI role to Gabbard. On one clear level, that sucks—but on another, it builds genuine support from people who felt represented by someone other than Trump. Dems can learn from that. So forth.
So what should centrists do? Be loud, be passionate, and be willing to actually get involved. Show up. Join the Democratic Party, go to local meetings, speak to liberals, make your voices heard. Learn from the passion of progressives, and recognize that really caring about something, and showing up visibly and legibly for it, matters. Don't sit begging for people to listen to you and for a party that doesn't authentically believe in your goals to moderate. Figure out your positive vision, make it legible, and become both useful and visible enough that people don't want to ignore you—even where they disagree. A political party is a vehicle designed for the purpose of winning elections, and the Median Voter Theorem wins elections. Show up.
Liberals who have felt cowed both by progressives and by a perceived need to hold a consistent party line, too, have a role: stop being cowed. Stop tripping over yourself to prove yourself to people who see you as at best an impure version of them, and speak frankly from your own position. Don't pretend at moderation you don't feel; be frank about your own position while being visibly open to working, and working seriously, with people who are authentically more moderate than you are.
As for progressives—look, it's not false consciousness. Your positions are not actually overwhelmingly more popular than everyone else's; the American public is genuinely split between Republican priorities and Democratic ones. Ask David Shor. But, as one example, health care reform - done right - is genuinely unifying. If you can combine reformist fervor with technocratic competence and deliver a health plan that works, people will want at least that part of what you're selling. Take an issue-by-issue approach, really seriously look at where you align with the public, and be ready to work with moderates rather than seeing them as less-than.
The future of the Democratic Party is not and should not be a future of focus-grouped fake moderation. It should be a wrestling match, one where people who authentically and seriously stand for divergent visions publicly work towards a shared goal of building something that won't just defeat the MAGA movement but will crush it. Do I want a technocratic centrist vision to come out on top? Of course. Everyone thinks their own faction is the best. But more essential than that is to at least have honest champions within the party, people who don't feel like they're just pandering to centrists to win elections--to have what everyone wants: a seat at the table.
It's not that this list is wrong, then. It's that it lacks sovl. It's full of "don't do this" and "don't do that," full of cargo-cult, focus-grouped moderation. You don't need platitudes about patriotism and gun shows. You need people who can credibly show how and why they love America, who can honestly fight for a positive vision they believe in, and who are ready to work with whoever is willing to work with them to achieve those visions.
Democrats don't need focus-grouped party lines. They need pragmatic authenticity. There's a clear road available to them, but they need the will to take it.
My examples were all Blue cities in Blue states. The LA fires were bad enough that Karen Bass is doing an investigation trying to find who let her go to Ghana. Sheng Thao was recalled. So was London Breed. Gavin Himself was on the short list for 2028.
I don't know if he'll be on it again in 2026 but he sure as hell ain't on it now.
Part of it, I think, is that Pure Blue City Governance is...
Well, let's pretend I wrote a paragraph here talking about how Trump is Hitler and, not only that, worse than Hitler. The American People? Worse than the 1930s Germans. All of them. Even the ones who oppose Trump are complicit. That's how bad Trump is.
Okay, with that out of the way, part of it, I think, is that Pure Blue City Governance is not great, Bob.
You don't have to be a Republican to be upset with London Breed, Karen Bass, or Gavin Newsom. California has problems that you absolutely positively cannot blame on Republicans.
You don't have to be a Republican to think that Brandon Johnson sucks. Chicago has problems that you absolutely positively cannot blame on Republicans.
NYC? How many NYC problems are due to Republicans? Eric Adams has problems that might result in Hochul tossing him on his keister but they ain't Republican problems and replacing him with a pure Blue mayor ain't gonna fix NYC's problems either.
If Blue Governance was a model of perfection that could allow its enthusiasts to cackle at how envied Blue State residents are, that'd be one thing. But it ain't.
Ralph Baric and Ian Lipkin in the NYT raising the alarm on a new Cell paper where Wuhan Institute of Virology scientists experiment on ANOTHER coronavirus that can infect humans under grossly inadequate biosafety precautions.
I just want to point out that if the virus came from the wet market, we don't have any evidence that this institute has had any leaks in the past.
convince voters that their ideas are better on the issues that voters care about
Thinking about this.
Part of the problem is that "convince" isn't really in the toolkit anymore. "Hey, I have some arguments for you and some counter-counter-arguments for the most common counter-arguments" is a really sweet attitude to have!
I agree that it's a better play than "no one could possibly disagree with me in good faith" which, for some reason, gained ascendancy among the faithful. "I'm not going to do your research for you." It's like acknowledging that there are reasonable questions is acknowledging that there are reasonable other positions and once you do that you've already lost.
And that's fine as a seasoning among the people who show up all the time. But as the main part of the meal? It's a recipe for just waiting for the other guy to screw up and show up to win the election in the vacuum created.
On Friday, the DNC’s X account posted a 32-point list of “WHAT DEMOCRATS DID IN FEBRUARY,” seemingly mimicking Elon Musk’s five-things email tactic. It included such relatively small-bore items as “Democrat Ken Jenkins won a special election for Westchester County Executive, soundly defeating his Trump-backed opponent.”
By yesterday afternoon, the post had been so roundly mocked and ratioed that DNC chief marketing officer Shelby Cole felt compelled to respond that the “template always used to bang for us,” before conceding “the internet thinks we are morons this time.”
It is a wall of text and it's easy to imagine a bunch of folks saying some variant of "I ain't reading all that" or merely posting a "leftist memes" post that mocks the whole "wall of text" thing.
But I can totally understand taking Musk's "name five things you did last week" email and turning it into an opportunity to brag. Five things? HERE'S FIVE SQUARED!!!!
The juicy part of the Politico article isn't the response to the tweet from the Democrats (which, seriously, I see what they were going for) but this part here:
In early February, a group of moderate Democratic consultants, campaign staffers, elected officials and party leaders gathered in Loudoun County, Virginia, for a day-and-a-half retreat where they plotted their party’s comeback.
The gathering — organized by Third Way, the centrist Democratic think tank, and operated by Chatham House Rules — resulted in five pages of takeaways, a document Playbook obtained from one of the participants. (Not all attendees endorsed each point.)
The Playbook. You know the thing where sometimes political parties have an autopsy and say "what should we do different next time?" after they lose a pretty disappointing election? Well, this was that and this was that from the moderate wing.
The article mentions five pretty interesting bullet points:
The party should “embrace patriotism, community, and traditional American imagery”;
Democrats should “ban far-left candidate questionnaires and refuse to participate in forums that create ideological purity tests” and “move away from the dominance of small-dollar donors whose preferences may not align with the broader electorate”;
They should “push back against far-left staffers and groups that exert a disproportionate influence on policy and messaging” ;
Candidates should “get out of elite circles and into real communities (e.g., tailgates, gun shows, local restaurants, churches)”; and
The party needs to “own the failures of Democratic governance in large cities and commit to improving local government.”
See? The moderate wing. I'm sure that the green wing would have had bullet points that talk about the need to embrace degrowth and the abortion wing would have had bullet points that talk about the right of women to control their own sexual destinies, the moderates talk about stuff like "maybe we shouldn't have the nutty lefties ask candidates to say stuff on camera that will show up in Republican ads?" and, of course, push back against far-left staffers. As if we can get the squishy moderates to show up at 6 in the morning on a Tuesday to work for snacks.
All that to say: The dems are trying to figure stuff out for the next election. Which is good.
Of course, maybe it's all wasted effort when you acknowledge how they're going up against the Republicans who are, by all accounts, imploding.
The commenter archive features may be temporarily disabled at times.
As is so often the case, I am reminded of Vonnegut:
“As for literary criticism in general: I have long felt that any reviewer who expresses rage and loathing for a novel or a play or a poem is preposterous. He or she is like a person who has put on full armor and attacked a hot fudge sundae or a banana split.”
Quickly! Suit up! You've got to defend that hot fudge sundae against the women attacking it!
If they don’t want to see it for some other reason, it’s not relevant to what I’m saying, no matter how much you try to muddy the water by bringing it up.
Do you think that automatically categorizing people who are expressing disappointment that it's not Adam Driver are harboring some secret racism?
Because that's how some folks are spinning it, you see.
Hell, some folks are spinning not wanting to see the show at all as being racist against the casting of Snape.
And, get this, this isn't the first time this particular game has been played. Ghostbusters 2016, the remake of Charlie's Angels... there's a *LOT* of people who argued that people who didn't want to see their slop were, in fact, sexist or racist or whathaveyou.
And now we've got a brand new controversy due to the casting of Snape.
"if they are upset, or won’t see it, because an actor cast in the movie is black, then they’re racist, by definition"
As if that's the first time we've seen this game played instead of the umpteenth this decade.
Is "being stupid" out of bounds?
Of course not.
Is "losing money" out of bounds?
Of course not. Wait, management is disagreeing...
If someone says "Man, I wish they got Adam Driver... now I'm not interested in the show...", can we accuse them of being secretly racist?
Oooh! If they claim that Rowling is transphobic, can I accuse them of rainbow-washing their racism?
"If you want to beat around that bush, feel free, but that’s the only bush I’m talking about."
It's an entertainment product in a marketplace that is oversaturated with entertainment products.
Feeling even the slightest of "ick"s is sufficient reason to watch Y instead of X for any Y and any X.
And accusing people of an "ism" or a "phobia" for chosing something, anything!, else in an oversaturated marketplace is a transparent attempt to inject a moral objection to a matter of taste and, get this, it trivializes the moral objection in the same way that calling wolf does.
Oh, you wanted Adam Driver to play Snape? That's racist.
They're busy screaming about how it should have been Adam Driver. "ADAM DRIVER WAS RIGHT THERE!"
Seriously, he was trending for two days on Twitter.
I, personally, am curious as to how they're going to handle James bullying Snape in high school or exploring how Lily didn't want to date Snape.
To be honest, I'm less expecting "I REFUSE TO WATCH THIS BECAUSE A BLACK ACTOR WAS CAST!" and more expecting a "Meh. Not for me..." response.
At which point the studios will pull a good, old-fashioned "YOU ONLY THINK IT WASN'T FOR YOU BECAUSE WE CAST A BLACK GUY!" and we can have an argument over the dark and unsettling reasons that other people aren't consuming a show that we ourselves also aren't consuming.
I would *LOVE* a review!
I've reached the point where I see maybe one movie a year in the theater and I can already tell that it ain't gonna be that one.
Sure. We can immediately talk about how the fans of the franchise are bad people.
I mean, they're fans of something created by JK Rowling so that goes without saying but now we can *REALLY* lean into how they shouldn't care about this silly thing.
"Why do you care? This is stupid and what you like is stupid. Why do you care?"
Maybe we can get the people actually creating the show to ask that.
Man, it really sucks that this precedent has been set, then.
I mean, I'd have to argue for saying that it's okay to do this stuff in front of a group of folks who are in charge of disbursing Federal Funds.
And, lemme tell ya, after the last decade or so, I'm not sure that the people who would be put in charge of arguing that this stuff should obviously be okay have the rhetorical chops to pull it off.
But I'd love to see them try and see what policies they institute after testifying that they may find such speech distasteful but college is supposed to be a hotbed of free speech activity where students will quite regularly experience speech that some might say is unpleasant.
Welp, here are the deets:
The question is whether people who refuse to watch the new one are racist.
I mean... are you going to watch it?
The up-to-the-minute debate is over whether or not Snape was.
So are you going to see it?
Stuff that happens in different time zones.
You know what's even worse than Democracy?
*LOCAL* Democracy.
Yeah, we could have nominated and elected Harris.
If only sane people had been in charge!
I saw that "Whistle While You Work", a cheery song where Snow White cleans up the house while the guys are at work turned into a cheery song where she teaches the guys how to do their own housecleaning.
"SOMEONE STOLE OUR DISHES!"
"They ain't stole, they're hid in the cupboard."
That's an *AWESOME* exchange.
And now it's gone. Like tears in the rain.
So the AP is not sufficient? CNN?
Don't forget the people who are refusing to see it because Gal Gadot is in it! Anti-semitism has an impact too!
"It cheapens the accusation of anti-semitism to conflate it with not wanting to see a movie because someone who supports genocide against indigenous people is in it."
"Too late. Anti-semitism. Now you have to take the charge seriously."
Bipedal humanoid robots are being allowed to run in a half marathon in Bejing.
The Rules:
Rules for humanoids running the Beijing Half-Marathon are announced:
⦿ Only bipedal robots (no wheels) - remote-controlled or autonomous
⦿ Height: 1.6 ft to 6.5 ft
⦿ Time limit: 3 hours and 30 minutes
⦿ 10-minute penalty for each battery swap
Is the AP sufficient? CNN?
There was a case with UCLA where they checked for stuff like Jewish jewelry and asked people who were unwilling to denounce Israel to take the long way around but I'm sure we're in agreement that that is particularly egregious.
This is from back in 2023. (Jump down to where it says "sabotage" if you want to get straight to the thread.)
Here's one of the points I made in the middle of the thread:
And this is from back August of last year where we discussed, among other things, Zeigler posting about Palestine (you may recall that Gal Gadot did her stint in the Israeli army). I recapped the drama for Kazzy here.
I do hope that Kazzy comes back and gives a comment about how much (or whether is an option, I guess) his kiddos liked the movie.
As for my take on Ziegler, I'll take the liberty of quoting myself:
Generally when you have a protest like that, you don’t let counterprotesters in.
From what I understand, the protest wasn't a four hour thing where they had one guy give a forty minute speech to introduce a guy who gives a thirty minute speech to introduce a guy who gives a twenty minute speech to introduce a guy who comes out and speaks for ten minutes with a whole bunch of songs praising peace and justice sprinkled among the speeches but was, instead, an encampment.
If they had a four hour thing and said "no Israelites except for Black Israelites", I'm pretty sure that everybody would have rolled their eyes and gone around the long way.
Such is the nature of four hour protests.
But an encampment? Why, I'd hate to have to argue that point in front of a judge.
That's one heck of a framing, anyway. Were you around for the whole "artisans" thing?
"The students took over the quad and closed it down to anybody who wasn't willing to denounce Israel."
"They're supporting Palestine."
Disney has cancelled its London premiere of Snow White.
Are you asking for the "For Real According To A Definition That You, Personally, Use" definition or the legal one that they're going to be using as justification?
Engage in illegal discrimination, lose your Federal funding? Gasp! This is just like Hitler!
I don't think it's left v. right. It might be easier if it were.
It's elite vs. non-elite and the elite got very good at explaining that "no, this isn't a foot fault, if you'd read the rules of the game from 1927, you'd see that "the line" refers to the part of the line closest to the net and not anything having to do with paint in general, I can't believe you're using the ruleset from 1948 or, sigh, 1977. What game did you even think we were playing?"
And some of the folks responded by reading a copy of the 1927 rules *VERY* closely and others just started trying to figure out why the refs cared when they started ignoring the back of the line but not when the opponent did.
We haven't had a stupid party for a long time. The elite still thinks it's a left/right thing.
I immediately panicked when I read Phil's accusation. "Did I miss that this was satire? Am I so poisoned that I read that and thought it was real?"
I am not too proud to say that I felt relief after I spent a few moments googling and confirming that, yes, it's real.
But I had to double and triple check first because, you know... you read that and you realize that it could very well be actively making fun of how people used to talk in 2017.
Man, wouldn't *THAT* be nice? I think you're thinking of The Babylon Bee which is, indeed, satire.
The Sacramento Bee is a newspaper that has Pulitzers and everything. While you may read the above and think "Jeez Louise, that's gotta be freakin' satire" (AND I SYMPATHIZE WITH THAT KNEE JERK RESPONSE!!!), sadly, it appears to be entirely in earnest.
The Sacramento Bee has an opinion piece that I'm sure you'll enjoy: California needs Newsom to be a leader, not another mediocre white man with a podcast
The people are speaking. Is Newsom listening?
Premise 1: You have one Third Reicher on your show and you have a Third Reich show.
Premise 2: Gavin Newsom had a Third Reicher on his show.
Conclusion: Gavin Newsom has a Third Reich show.
Now, if the conclusion is obviously false, we have a problem with one of the premises.
If the conclusion is true, we have to explore whether having a Third Reich show is enough to make the host of a Third Reich show a Nazi himself.
If it does... then the governor of California is a Nazi.
That hasn't happened since 1975.
Wait, the podcast he went on was Charlie Kirk's!!!
Newsom is reaching out!!!
Holy cow, he's someone who would have gone on Joe Rogan.
I don't think I know anybody who is a Tateista. Like, not even on Twitter have I encountered someone who says "you gotta see this" for any reason but to (rhetorically) ask "why in the hell is this guy considered charismatic?"
Even Joe Rogan, to whom I do not subscribe, gets boosted inside of my circles to get a "you gotta watch this clip!" from time to time.
I have never seen a complimentary clip of Tate.
So maybe no problem, right? Nobody I know even listens to him.
Right?
OH! I stand corrected. (I thought that there was a thing that baptized Protestants in good standing who believed in the Presence could do it.)
Oh, was that the question you asked?
He's running for President. He suspects that you can't be on the 20 side of a national 80-20 issue as Harris just amply demonstrated.
When I was a kid, the tragedy of schism meant that baptized protestants couldn't partake of the Eucharist. I understand that the Catholic church has lightened up on that in the last decade or so.
In any case, if memory serves, there was an amount of resentment on the part of protestants in general that they couldn't partake of the Eucharist.
Lemme tell ya, anybody who showed up in the Babtist church could take a pinch of bread and a shot of grape juice even if they were Methodists.
So, at the very least, there were hard feelings on the part of those told that they were Heretics living in apostasy. This usually resulted in hammering on several of the (now moot) 95 theses.
As for the Grand Mufti declaring people heretics, the most recent example I can think of is Rushdie.
Is it okay to use him as an example?
You're *NOT* going to change Tate's mind.
However: The goal isn't changing Tate. It's making Tate irrelevant.
"I shouldn't have to make Tate irrelevant! He should already be irrelevant!" may be a true statement but the fact that Tate is not irrelevant is a problem that won't be addressed by pointing out that he shouldn't be relevant and you shouldn't even have to explain why.
Well, the part where you say "“heresy,” however interesting to outsiders, is a matter of internal club rules and has no purchase on non- members" seems to be true for you personally but it doesn't seem to be true for others.
Which is how we got here in the first place.
Eh, I'd say that "the statements you're making are false" isn't hall monitoring.
But, hey. Opinions are like house pets. Everybody has one.
"Not everybody has a house pet."
"Oh, hall monitoring me are you?"
your panda bear contrarian can’t give a straight yes or no answer on whether I have to deal with a Leo Frank denier or other anti-Semites in good faith or if I can just dismiss them.
My argument is that you can do whatever you want and you don't have to do anything.
However, there are tradeoffs and if you don't like the tradeoff, *THAT IS NOT MY FAULT*.
And cornering me to say "oh, there aren't tradeoffs!" WILL NOT MAKE THE TRADEOFFS DISAPPEAR.
You don't seem to understand that the people who believe that Leo Frank was innocent are the people who are the Leo Frank Truthers and until you hammer that down flat you're not going to understand why you're the one who has to lift the burden.
It sucks.
I agree... DavidTC's comment just a few short comments above is probably the ideal kind of comment we'd want.
But we also need a place for the stuff that isn't worth comment rescue to go.
Hrm. I'll do a comment rescue.
It's important to have a place where we can talk about Italian senators offering sex to Saddam.
It's an important topic!
It just shouldn't be in the comments to the music post.
They're a sink.
People work hard writing an essay on the importance of a fuzz pedal for electric guitars and WHAMMO there's a link to how an Italian senator who was famous for, ahem, adult movies in the early 70s has offered Saddam Hussein sexual favors in exchange for peace.
And now the comments to this essay about the fuzz pedal has a subsection devoted to whether it's culturally insensitive to offer meaningless sex to Muslims with a subsubsection devoted to whether this has ever worked arguing against people who make jokes like "when has this ever *NOT* worked?" and the person who wrote the original essay about the fuzz pedal just wanted to talk about music, man.
Mosley? I don't know who that is. It's Hitler or nobody.
If we could figure out a way for Europe to unite and create something like a common Union of some sort, maybe they could pave the way and provide an example for the rest of the world.
"This is what The Future looks like!", they could demonstrate.
You keep making assertions about non-members that aren't true.
Could you rephrase your statements to be about you instead of about the group at large? Maybe that would help.
I'd suggest that you'd better speak out against him and shoot his arguments down one by one by one and, if you can, make his arguments look stupid and silly.
I mean... look at the trendlines and look at what's likely to be true next year, in five years, and in ten years.
I *SERIOUSLY* think that growing flabby in your ability to argue against people with bad arguments is *NOT* in your best interests.
No, you should not treat blood libel against *ANYBODY* in good faith.
And, again, if we're thinking that there was a conspiracy against Leo Frank to convict him despite his innocence and multiple appeals that goes all the way to the Supreme Court, that makes *US* the "Truthers" and you should have a *LOT* more sympathy for people who believe in conspiracies against innocent people than you do.
I'm pretty sure that since Leo Frank's conviction has not been overturned (even after the Supreme Court declined to hear his appeal), the Truthers are the ones who say that there was a conspiracy to declare him guilty. You should use a different word.
You should not treat blood libel against anybody with good faith.
Pelagianism is a heresy too.
Closest one is in Denver.
Dang it.
Against Manicheans, it just sort of bubbles up sometimes.
So would you say that the time for argument is past?
Holy crap, they've brought back beef tallow fries.
I may have to get in the car...
For those of you who were saying "I'm not going to Steak and Shake until they quote Nietzsche!", you can get in the car.
Yeah, my suspicion is that Russia's nukes are useless. I'm 92% sure of that.
That 8%? That's a pretty big 8%.
You know the odds for Russian Roulette? This is about 50% worse/better (depending on your POV) than those odds.
Especially if it'll manifest something like "out of the 200 nukes they launched, good news! Only 16 worked!"
whether the club rules of someone else’s club are “correct” is meaningless to non-members.
I disagree.
I find heresies *EXCEPTIONALLY* meaningful, even for religions for which I am not a member.
You can learn much from heresies. (That's part of what makes them so virulent.)
Manicheanism dates to the 3rd Century A.D. so we're well past the books of Moses there.
Would it be enough to discuss Manichean beliefs regarding the resurrection of the dead?
Mani's emphasis on oral tradition versus Jewish emphasis on it?
What are you looking for? I can give you a somewhat scholarly answer depending on which part of Talmud we're going to be pointing at.
Despite how cool it would be if Christianity were the only religion with heresies, sadly, many religions have them.
Hell, there are even atheists who argue for the existence of heresies within atheism (though if you wanted to talk about post-protestantism, I'd probably concede the point even as the atheists refuse it).
But Mani took and twisted Christianity, Judaism, Buddhism, Zoroastrianism, and probably some other stuff. Er, not "twisted". "Made his own". "Forged a new path".
In any case... Heresy ain't limited to Jesus Enthusiasts.
Saul, Manicheanism is a heresy.
Speaking of polls, the WSJ reports that ABC is shutting down 538.
Florida's Attorney General, James Uthmeier, has opened a criminal investigation into the recently returned Tate brothers.
Warning: Attempt to read property "comment_ID" on null in /home/ordina27/public_html/wp-includes/comment-template.php on line 851
https://ordinary-times.com/commenter-thread/#comment-"> to
Warning: Attempt to read property "comment_author" on null in /home/ordina27/public_html/wp-content/plugins/otx-sotd/state-of-the-discussion.php on line 894
Yeah, but it wasn't about that. It was about the moderates getting together to write a playbook for next time.
Tracing Woodgrains had a barn burner criticizing the playbook:
I would have gone for "Maharaja".
The Economist had this back in 2009...
I know that the photographers *LOVED* giving Obama a halo in shots...
See? Bluesky! Nary a cultist to be seen.
If we could repeal the Hatch Act, the states would have a *LOT* more elbow room.
Polls, polls, polls. Here's 538 and here's RCP.
My examples were all Blue cities in Blue states. The LA fires were bad enough that Karen Bass is doing an investigation trying to find who let her go to Ghana. Sheng Thao was recalled. So was London Breed. Gavin Himself was on the short list for 2028.
I don't know if he'll be on it again in 2026 but he sure as hell ain't on it now.
Export tariffs? That's insane. That'll get reversed within moments. There isn't a single constituent for that. Not one.
Part of it, I think, is that Pure Blue City Governance is...
Well, let's pretend I wrote a paragraph here talking about how Trump is Hitler and, not only that, worse than Hitler. The American People? Worse than the 1930s Germans. All of them. Even the ones who oppose Trump are complicit. That's how bad Trump is.
Okay, with that out of the way, part of it, I think, is that Pure Blue City Governance is not great, Bob.
You don't have to be a Republican to be upset with London Breed, Karen Bass, or Gavin Newsom. California has problems that you absolutely positively cannot blame on Republicans.
You don't have to be a Republican to think that Brandon Johnson sucks. Chicago has problems that you absolutely positively cannot blame on Republicans.
NYC? How many NYC problems are due to Republicans? Eric Adams has problems that might result in Hochul tossing him on his keister but they ain't Republican problems and replacing him with a pure Blue mayor ain't gonna fix NYC's problems either.
If Blue Governance was a model of perfection that could allow its enthusiasts to cackle at how envied Blue State residents are, that'd be one thing. But it ain't.
Zeynep Tufekci reports:
I just want to point out that if the virus came from the wet market, we don't have any evidence that this institute has had any leaks in the past.
Some argue that Trump is this.
convince voters that their ideas are better on the issues that voters care about
Thinking about this.
Part of the problem is that "convince" isn't really in the toolkit anymore. "Hey, I have some arguments for you and some counter-counter-arguments for the most common counter-arguments" is a really sweet attitude to have!
I agree that it's a better play than "no one could possibly disagree with me in good faith" which, for some reason, gained ascendancy among the faithful. "I'm not going to do your research for you." It's like acknowledging that there are reasonable questions is acknowledging that there are reasonable other positions and once you do that you've already lost.
And that's fine as a seasoning among the people who show up all the time. But as the main part of the meal? It's a recipe for just waiting for the other guy to screw up and show up to win the election in the vacuum created.
I do think "maybe we shouldn't make Republican ads for them? At least on 80-20 issues?" isn't a *BAD* play.
I'd love to see the right lessons.
Politico had a funny report yesterday:
Here, you can check out the tweet yourself.
It is a wall of text and it's easy to imagine a bunch of folks saying some variant of "I ain't reading all that" or merely posting a "leftist memes" post that mocks the whole "wall of text" thing.
But I can totally understand taking Musk's "name five things you did last week" email and turning it into an opportunity to brag. Five things? HERE'S FIVE SQUARED!!!!
I found the various quotes to be interesting. A couple of people suggested not making a wall but making it more visually pleasing. I laughed at the Dr. Bronner's joke.
The juicy part of the Politico article isn't the response to the tweet from the Democrats (which, seriously, I see what they were going for) but this part here:
The Playbook. You know the thing where sometimes political parties have an autopsy and say "what should we do different next time?" after they lose a pretty disappointing election? Well, this was that and this was that from the moderate wing.
The article mentions five pretty interesting bullet points:
See? The moderate wing. I'm sure that the green wing would have had bullet points that talk about the need to embrace degrowth and the abortion wing would have had bullet points that talk about the right of women to control their own sexual destinies, the moderates talk about stuff like "maybe we shouldn't have the nutty lefties ask candidates to say stuff on camera that will show up in Republican ads?" and, of course, push back against far-left staffers. As if we can get the squishy moderates to show up at 6 in the morning on a Tuesday to work for snacks.
All that to say: The dems are trying to figure stuff out for the next election. Which is good.
Of course, maybe it's all wasted effort when you acknowledge how they're going up against the Republicans who are, by all accounts, imploding.