Remember when it was given that no conservatives worked in the arts? Remember when it was a given that conservatives were uneducated and conformist? Remember when it was a given conservatives were just dumb? Remember when it was a given that conservatives were CONSERVATIVE instead of utter and complete rebels defying the status quo.
You probably still know a lot of people that think that way. Pat them on the head. They’re either old or so conformist that they’ve never examined their assumptions.
When a commercial a few years ago told the boss who talked of “sticking it to the man” that he was THE MAN I knew that the long con of the left was done with. And it must be now a good five years since I had a knock out drag out fight with someone proclaiming the received wisdom that the reason conservatives are scarce in the arts is because we’re less creative, less inventive. Since we’re, you know, part of the establishment.
Which would make perfect sense of course, if “conservative” meant, as it was supposed to be, those who defend the establishment.
But during the 20th century, the word … evolved. There is this perception that the left distorts words on purpose, but that’s not actually — I think — the truth. The distortion of words only started as their concept of the world and reality deviated to a point that they couldn’t use the words in the intended sense and not confront the reality. In fact, some future historians — if there are any — will probably identify the rate of distorting word meanings with an ideology in power and still holding on to power, but in deep distress because its vision of the future has been disproven, and it’s now just holding on for power’s sake. But is unable to confront it.
In fact, this goes with nonsensical things proclaimed by any regime in power. Take the divine right of kings, a thing invented only when the very idea of monarchy was in distress. By the time monarchies started falling like ripe fruit, kings themselves claimed to be revolutionaries and for the radical equality of man, which they, somehow, could preserve. (And only they.) In the earlier times, when the ideology was healthy, the divine right of kings was implied and never questioned. By the time it had to be proclaimed, it was dead as the dodo, so it had to be shouted from the rooftops.
Over the twentieth century “Conservative” came to mean “To the right of Lenin.” Because after all, communism was the way of the future and therefore anyone holding on to the old “capitalist” mode of society was someone trying to conserve the past.
This vision got hit with wave after wave of discomfirmation even as it adherents climbed to positions of power and held it through dirty pool.
In this, their ideology being dead gave them a leg up. At some level, they knew they couldn’t justify what they were doing, so they abandoned all principles, played for power, and attracted power-hungry horrors. And hired people who served their vision of power at all costs.
They project this, btw, by characterizing anyone who escaped from a leftist regime as someone who was in power there. Or perhaps they believe it. Since their life is now all about power, they view everyone who wants to do something for altruistic and moral reasons as a liar and vaguely stupid. Because proclaiming THEIR ideology is the way to power.
It really is, you know? The right, like idiots, tend to sacrifice less-than-clean members to principle — see Santos — while the left will hold on to the Hamass “Squad” and the ridiculously corrupt members (Pelosi) for dear life, because the principles they proclaim are all from the lips out.
There is a lot of power in a dead ideology. For the divine right of kings, see Monsieur L’Etat C’est Moi Louis XIV.
For the left it made the “long march” a thing. Because they hired only those who agreed with them while the right hired whoever was “competent” they were able to grab all the positions of power.
Game it out. You get one leftist in and allow him or her power over hiring, all the next hiring will of leftists. And no one who isn’t at least willing to pretend to be left will be denied work, or run off if they manage to get in.
This is how news reporting fell, and the arts, and academia, and and and, culminating with corporate leadership.
There is a price, though. If you hire for any reason other than competence, you’re going to lose competence. Maybe not all at once, but slowly, over time.
Admittedly if you’re doing that, you’re safer hiring for nepotism, if only because certain type of abilities and talents run in families. Having grown up where all my ancestors had for a long while, I can tell you that. Everyone expected me to be academically gifted, physically awkward and blunt as wooden sword. Which, by and large, I was. My family, too, unless it’s going through one of its “poor as Job” phases is good for administrative jobs. If in a poor phase, we tend to climb through being gifted and industrious craftsmen (My path really.)
But if you’re hiring people who mostly know their “principles” are bullshit to be proclaimed from the mouth-out while playing for power, your entire structure is going to devolve — instead of the structure designed to do “the thing” whatever that thing is — into a structure devoted to fuck-fuck games.
Also, as the final waves of discomfirmation hit, with the fall of the USSR and the at least somewhat open propagation of what a horror life was there and how many people communism killed, the people willing to pay lip service to leftism were both dumber and more venal than usual. Those with a brain were even more focused on power and usually psychopaths of the first order.
Which leads us to the state of the arts, the media, most of the corporate leadership and academia.
The revelation of the plagiarism infesting academia surprised you? Oooooh boy, do I have bad news for you. It’s been like that for 50 years at least. They can’t create and they can’t think. Part of it is the few of them who can are afraid to, because the ideology has gone crazy-irrational and turns around and beats you down for thoughts that were acceptable last week. See for instance, how many movies from the eighties and nineties couldn’t be made today. (I have one series of books published 15 years ago that couldn’t be published today. (Yes, I’ll be bringing it back out, because you know what? I’m done giving a f*ck.)) So the ones who can think have decided not to. Or are too scared to. And might not even be aware of it. All they have is a bottomless pit of fear and hunger for power and that is really bad at creating “new contributions to the knowledge base of humanity.”
And this why traditional publishing is dying an ugly and flailing death. It’s why the arts aren’t. It’s why if you hooked up electrical cables to Walt Disney’s tomb you could power America, he’s spinning so hard.
It’s not so much that they want to shove the ideology down our throats: it’s that it’s ALL they have. It’s what put them in the position they are in.
Create? They can’t create. They are the ultimate establishment men and women, raised to repeat back what they heard, flawlessly, and never to deviate. They always knew that was the path of to success. And it was. They look around, and everything at the top is like them. So they imagine everyone else are subhumans.
And because questioning, denying, creating are completely beyond their reach, they assume it’s beyond everyone’s reach. They’re just clever enough to hide it, see? And mouth the right words. And that’s why they’re supposed to lead.
This sad state of affairs, with worsening performance for every infested field, persisted as long as it did, under the illusion that the people creating increasingly soggier pieces of cardboard passing itself as novels, or paintings or whatever, because the critics and academia were also infested. So what was praised to the sky was soggy, moldy cardboard. What people trained on was soggy, moldy cardboard. Even the occasional still-creative soul was thus destroyed and made into a copy of those hollowed out by the poisonous ideology and craving for power.
But it’s been many years since I had to argue that yes, there are as creative people on our side of the isle as the other, and that what was happening was pre-and-quiet-cancellation of anyone who wouldn’t sing in the choir.
Pre, if you were identified as “to the right of Lenin” before you broke in. and quiet, after. In writing as in the arts, as in industry, they invented some crime, some reason you were cancelled. it was never “because his/her thoughts threatened us.” You had insulted someone. You were secretly a horrible person who tortured animals. Whatever. In writing it didn’t need to be anything specific. The entire industry worked by hearsay because there were so many people trying to break in and so few slots for them.
All you needed was a whisper campaign: “Well, she” intent look “you know.” And if the other person had no clue at all, they pretended they did, because not to know, and to associate with someone who’d been cancelled meant you were also cancelled, also “you know?”
In the heights of industry, where people were likely to fight more, they usually found some reason or created it. I wonder how many people were drugged and photographed with live girls, dead boys, horses and parrots? Probably a lot. Probably a lot more were implicated in embezzling and financial crimes. Even if the crime had to be invented.
I laugh — but not with any joy — when people complain of cancel culture.
Cancel culture? What, you noticed when? Ten years ago?
Ah, but that’s when their power started falling apart. And then cancellation had com out in the open. Which means it’s done. It’s already done.
Why? Can’t I see all the cancelled people?
Yes, I can. I can also see the mechanism failing and sputtering, and the cancelled coming back.
Look, it used to work because the establishment was unified. No one could come to the attention of the people who had been cancelled. This means the establishment could make up whatever it very well wanted about the cancelled person, and more importantly, people were FORGOTTEN.
What killed that regime was the ability for the cancelled to say in the public eye. Indie publishing, and mass-broadcasting. This blog, sure, but also podcasts, indie music, etc. etc. etc.
The cancelled don’t go away and disappear, allowing the lies about them to proliferate. Or their fans to imagine they are dead.
Eventually this means that cancelling is just a sign you displeased the left who, as our own boycotts are starting to show, are a minuscule part of the buying public.
I fully expect the time to come when people put “cancelled by the left” on the cover of their normal, no politics, books. (They already put it in the cover of political books.)
For now? For now it means very little, outside a very limited circle. Which means of course that the left has gotten more vicious, trying to make it stick with stuff like debanking, and trying to equate challenging them with being evil.
But it’s not sticking. People are using this brave new world to get around, get over, get under.
Not saying it doesn’t hurt — both emotionally and financially. — In fact I made the point when explaining why even Glenn Reynolds fundraises. No matter how well some of us manage to do, you can take it to the bank that if you’re may age or older, started out under the ancien regime and are to the right of Lenin, you’ve taken major financial body blows. Most of them, of course, before tech opened things up. But not all of them. Not nearly. We’re still throttled to a great extent. (Explain to me how MHI doesn’t have movies yet? one of the most visual and successful series. Even more so, explain why Honor Harrington doesn’t? When mediocre series on the other side were filmed and pushed at people?)
But it’s changing. And cancellation? Utter cancellation? It no longer works. Which is why the old argument is only trotted out by the old and the terminally out of touch.
Cancelling doesn’t work while it’s in the open. It’s a thing of darkness and quiet social maneuvering.
Once it’s visible, once people stare at it with open eyes, it starts to lose power. Like “the divine right of kings” if you have to say it and defend it to the masses in general, you’re going to lose.
So don’t look away. Don’t let them maneuver in the dark. Keep your eyes wide open and ask questions.
Yes, what you see might be horrible, but watch it. don’t flinch.
You kill it by not looking away.
According To Hoyt 
I’ve stared at this monster for far too long.
I want to stuff it and mount it over my mantle.
And if I ever earn enough money to have a mantle, I will put it right up there.
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Nailing the hide to your front door or to your fence gate serves as a warning to the others.
(grin)
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I was thinking of crucifying each of the enablers at every mile point. Sounds appropriate.
I want the corpse of the monster so he can watch me bang his hot wife every single night… (heh…)
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c4c
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I would at least read the blurb of a book marketed as “cancelled by the left”
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Used to work years ago when they would advertise a play or a book as “Banned in Boston!”
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Oh the state of Hollywood is such a disaster. Endless remakes, and lecturing woke garbage that no one wants to watch.
Hollywood went the Stockton Rush route and it shows. It’s just taking longer for the submarine to implode in front of us. Yuck. Goo everywhere.
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When Deadpool and Wolverine is the most watched trailer for the Super Bowl this year with a massive emphasis on being anti-Disney and anti-M-She-U in it’s marketing…that is what people in AA call “a moment of clarity.”
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This has potential to be a smashingly-awesome movie! Epic!
Or, far more likely DEIsney will have D and W more upgefucht than Star Wars. And they pretty much -have- to geld D and W or they admit they ruined Star Wars.
Dont. Fuck. Up. Wolverine. Dont.
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In the previous Deadpool movie, Domino was both race-swapped and hairy-pitted. I want to love the idea of Deadpool-Wolverine, but I don’t think I can. Even I, with my decades-spanning comic library with a HUGE emphasis on X-Men, haven’t even seen anything more than those two stills from the set with Reynolds and Jackman in costume. Maybe I’ll watch the trailer this weekend when I’m downstate for work.
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Don’t blink or the weeping angels will get you.
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“Challenge Authority… Unless it’s “Liberal” Authority”. :twisted:
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I’m suddenly reminded of the Bloom County series of comic strips in which some members of the cast inadvertantly started a student protest against the university TOTB. This was during the ’80s, so it was a conservative protest against the left.
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I remember that one! The students were waving signs with slogans like “Build the MX!” and “Don’t trust anyone under $30,000 a year!”
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Now I want that on a bumper sticker. Either that or, “Question authority? Why should I?” Or “Question authority… except for mine.”
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“Challenge Authority” painted over with “OBEY!” and the Anarchy symbol.
Sums up today’s Red Leftroids rather well.
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I experienced “Cancel Culture” personally in the 1980s, possibly in the 1970s as well, but I was too young to recognize it for what it was. Either way, it wasn’t new then.
Sunlight is still one of the best social disinfectants.
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So is the TechLevel 15 Man-Portable Fusion Gun in Traveller RPG.
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Don’t get me started on the lack of creativity in academia. I was, once upon a time, a graduate student at an R1 research institution (Wayne State University in Detroit, MI) pursuing an MA in American History. I took a seminar class in writing American History because it was required. After showing up for the first night of class, I became aware that the theme of the class was “Justice”. Racial justice, economic justice, environmental justice…
You get the idea.
I spent an entire semester arguing my point of view. I was branded as a Nazi, having actually been asked the question, “How was Hitler misunderstood?” and threatened with expulsion (by one Kidada Williams a professor at the university, but not the one that taught the class I was taking) for the crime of stating that I wasn’t ashamed of being white. People seemed to be surprised that I wasn’t willing to give in every time someone said “offensive.” I didn’t care.
I think the moment that made their jaws drop the hardest was when I looked up several weeks into the course and said “I haven’t heard an argument I wasn’t familiar with since this class started.” They were all stunned. I wasn’t. It had actually gotten to the point that some of the anti-gun propaganda they showed (after I revealed myself as a gun owner) were so egregious that I thought they had been made as right-wing propaganda because leftists couldn’t possibly be dumb enough to believe it…
And I was wrong.
They actually did believe it, and thought they were going to convince me of something using it.
But seriously, an entire semester, focusing on one of their favorite subjects…
And nothing new. Not. A. Single. Thing.
And they wonder why we call them NPCs.
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Some years back the weaponized autism over on 4-chan did some parody anti-gun posters. Things like “‘r’ is just a few minutes, death is forever”. Deliberately created as parody. Only I found them on the Brady Campaign’s FB page, presented as real arguments. When their provenance was revealed, they were quietly deleted. But they were there. I saw them. They do believe that crap, it’s just that some of the folk in charge are astute enough to know to keep the quiet part quiet.
But that appears to be changing as the Left continues to lose its flipping mind.
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The “OK hand-sign is a white supremacist symbol” nonsense was started by 4-chan as a joke. The left went all-in on it. When the truth came to light, the left started saying, “Yeah, it started on 4-chan, but real white supremacists subsequently started using it.”
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Yep, though it’s utterly bullshit.
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Leftists looking for ‘real white supremacists’ is as real as OJ looking for the real killers.
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I’m sure 4chan shared them, but they didn’t invent them– I was laughing at those in high school, well before the website was launched, probably ’99. Dark humor.
And yes, I saw “in the wild” when they showed up on anti-gun pages, posted by the moderators. Either that’s insanely deep under cover trolling, or…..
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‘ “R” is just a few minutes’
Not sure what that means 🤔.
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I think it’s short for a type of attack that usually happens to women.
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Yep. Although there’s a surprising number of men who get victimized in that particular way. You might think it’d be only 5% or less of victims that are men, but it’s likely closer to 15-20% as best as I can tell (VERY hard to know since men tend not to report being victimized in that way, even more than women tend not to report it). Still, that means a likely 80-85% of victims are women, so “usually happens to women” is completely accurate.
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It’s evil no matter who it happens to. Male victims deserve support too.
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It’s all about power imbalance—but not always physical. I once read an anonymized account from a big strong Marine who was assaulted through manipulation of threats to reputation. (As in “nobody will believe you because I am small and you let me into your place.”)
I realize that it’s impossible to prove that it was true, but it had all the emotional “tells” of a victim. And who could he tell? Who could he get therapy from?
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Felony sexual assault with penetration.
Sorry, some fora get twitchy about saying “rape” and, so, habits of abbreviation and allusion.
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I had an “American History” course where we called the (German citizen) instructor “Comrade professor to his face. Was taking ROTC class, so expected to wear uniforms on certain days. When told -not- to wear it in class made sure to do so, and had a bunch of cadet buddies hang around the class door coming and going. The few wannabee “enforcers” kinda faded into the background.
Respectfully refuted the bullshit. Destroyed repeatedly the arguments. Cited Communist Manifesto and others such to wreck his more egregious botching of his own points of view.
Was an utter dick.
Ran my final paper through my department dean and another with “English” credentials. Both graded it a strong A and said “let me know if there is a disagreement.” When I handed it in, Comrade Professor said “you don’t really expect to pass do you?” whereupon I told him the paper had been reviewed by my department head who requested to be informed of result.
I can play the academia duck-duck games.
Passed with a B. Probably for “Bastard”. My Dean advised me to take the win and run.
Only textbook I tossed in a dumpster. Was worse than Zinn’s blivet.
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Remember, Trump’s comment about “They’ll let you grab them by the pussy” was no big deal when he was a democrat, but as soon as he started running as a republican, it was “Horrors!”
I’m still suspicious of the accusations against Cosby. If nothing else, that TPTB indulged his kink when he was new in Hollywood to have a hold against him later if necessary. (Not singling him out, they’d do that to everyone.)
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I have nothing against Bill Cosby having supplied drugs to women that he then had sex with; as long as he told them beforehand that it would relax them and reduce their anxiety and tension. Slipping someone a Mikey without their knowing it is something else (i.e. rape) entirely.
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I understand about your reluctance to believe the charges against Cosby. I tend to fall more on the side that it may be true, but that’s because I heard things dating back to I-Spy. That was always OK with the Powers That Be until he started telling young black audiences that they needed to marry and get jobs rather than just be feral layabouts relying on crime or government largesse. THAT was the unforgivable sin.
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Yes. TPTB either encouraged his kink, or had no problems with it until they wanted to rein him in (and give warning to anyone else who might be thinking about leaving the pack).
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I think this is one of the most misunderstood, deliberately or otherwise, things Trump ever said. His was a comment about how women often react to powerful men. Hillary Clinton and Kamala Harris come to mind.
Cosby seems to have been sleaze. When he was no longer profitable, they dragged him down. While he was profitable, he was untouchable, like Weinstein and Bubba Clinton.
Trump has to be the cleanest man ever, despite what seems to be a very high “body count”. If there was something more, they’d have produced it.
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They keep implying Epstein’s island. But if there were anything actually there, they would be shouting it with trumpets, even if they had to sacrifice a few of their own to do it.
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Would they sacrifice Bubba? I think that the combination of guilt by various public figures and the wonderful compromat Epstein provided to the intelligence organs mitigates against that. Once made public, blackmail is of little use.
That said, Trump seems to be the only person who ever called the cops on Epstein. I suspect there’s nothing.
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Called the cops on him twice, since I suspect it was Trump that pushed for Epstein’s second, and final, arrest.
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“Trump flew on Epstein’s jet XYZ times!”
“Yes, he did. To DC. With the pilot that they stuck on the DC trips because he COULDN’T be trusted to shut up and not say anything about the island trips.”
Epstein rather obviously was fishing to see if Trump would be a customer, like any other abuser does. Trump didn’t “pass” that defense. This is why abusers will be in the middle of good people who don’t know anything about it, because they filter for folks who will go to the cops if they get dropped in the deep end right off the bat!
Epstein had to be FURIOUS that Trump actually protected that pool girl, and backed her to the hilt, AND kicked the guy out of his properties.
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Trump was around Epstein because he was schmoozing with all the Democrats hanging around Epstein. But Trump is the only one they’re going after.
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The apostate.
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this
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The Cosby story has the ring of what happens to a “ticket taker” when they stray off the reservation. They hold the dirt to keep people in line. Sometimes examples have to be made.
As far as Trump goes, they’ve just started prosecuting him for being Trump. They’re fabricating evidence and even crimes for him. Too many people believe what they see, even when it makes no sense.
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Trump was a ticket taker too. One of the reasons everyone was surprised is that they figured he would be just another NYC Democrat. He wasn’t.
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Back in the 20th century, when I worked for a large academic publisher (instead of freelancing), one of thing things I regularly did on journal articles was take out the Acknowledgments sections where the authors thanked the anonymous referees by name.
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the Conservative Treehouse talks about “Pretending” … and when people stop Pretending the nonsense starts falling apart … The USSR fell when the people stopped Pretending …
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yes
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Oh, that poor gal. Her paint by numbers kit exploded.
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She just identifies as “multi-racial” to blend into society.
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That or it was a drive-by Holi.
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I thought it was visually striking, and took it. :D
Not AI
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right?
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(singing) No one knows what is like to be the cray-cray, …….behind blue eyes….
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Fight the good fight everybody, every minute of every day.
Funny how all those music artists and liberal actors still have their millions and charge more for their abilities/tickets than the lowest scale artist or actor, actress. (Fck You, Actress is a valid job description because a man can’t be a woman) If they truly believed the crap they spouted they would give their money away until they were living on the street along with the other insane. Let Hollywood collapse under the weight of all their DIE rules. Sooner rather than later they will run out of money to waste and will go back to making money, Why? because capitalism wins every time it is tried, so does meritocracy. You are seeing the ‘Great Reset’ play out before your very eyes, unfortunately for the left it is the resurgence of capitalism, not the victory of socialism/communism as they had hoped. Fck you Communists, F*ck You progressives, may you burn in hell for every career, and every life you have ruined. I leave that up to God and the box office myself, you are not worth the bullet or trouble to put your ass in the ground.
Yes it is going to be hard, birthing pains don’t you know.
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Not to say that the ideological blinkers of Hollywood aren’t a big component, but Correia and Weber not getting money thrown at them can plausibly be attributed to the industry’s sheer towering idiocy, especially toward SF/F stuff. Otherwise, how do you explain Bujold not getting adapted?
Her Vorkosigan series is highly successful, in sales and respect within the genre. She is definitely liberal enough to make Hollywood execs feel really virtuous about acquiring her rights. What could please them more than (something they can at least plausibly pass off as) the enlightened progressive galaxy dragging a regressive, reactionary planet back into the light? What could thrill them more than (I think it was) A Civil Campaign, with a transgender plotline right there for the taking? (Okay, they’d have to go through several other novels to get to that, so it might be laziness.) Why aren’t they begging her to take their money?
There’s one practical stumbling block: how on Earth do you cast Miles? But common sense like that has seldom stopped Hollywood before. (I won’t give examples, or I’d be here all week.)
I don’t know. Maybe Bujold is just too level-headed for them to accept her as One Of Them. (One can interpret that as “right of Lenin,” so you may be fully correct after all.) Maybe Hollywood is just too weird for outsiders to understand at all. It makes me wonder how they can dress themselves, never mind make enough money to keep the whole racket afloat.
Republica restituendae
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Yep, I’ve honestly wondered that, myself – why the Vorkosigan series has never been been optioned – you’d think that Bujold herself hits enough of the right politically-correct themes to make the series a shoo-in.
I’d watch it, in any case.
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From the lack, I am assuming Bujold is (as are others) too intelligent to have sold the rights under the usual Hollywood-Sodomy standard contract, where they bugger you and your ideas and your characters, coming and going, with no grease.
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Fair.
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Same way you cast John Rhys-Davies as Gimli (or all the Dwarves in The Hobbit movies).
Camera angles and greenscreen.
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Or animate a la Fortiche (the folk who did Arcane.) But you have to get people in there who understand their audience, and Hollywood clearly doesn’t.
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I was re-reading some Bujold recently, and I as struck by how the Overton window has zipped past her. Yes, there is the trans as major plot point and planet of gays, but on the other hand the men are men and the women are women in ways that seem almost quaint in current year. Like, even though Barryar was supposed to be this backwards place that is getting pulled into the future, the traditional society just has too much character, and ends up holding its own.
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One of my favorite moments in there (aside from many of the obvious ones) is when a nasty person tries to blow up Cordelia’s marriage by “horrifying” her with the revelation that her husband is bisexual, and she, for whom that holds no weighted emotional value, replies, “Was bisexual. Now he’s monogamous.”
I’m sure there are many people who would be offended by that statement for various reasons, but it’s such a lovely spit-take moment.
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Miles is 5′ 1″ so, at the short end of ‘normal’ and slightly hunchbacked. That could be just a matter of the actor’s posture. Find an unknown (short) actor and go for it.
Wen Spencer’s Elfhome series would also make fantastic movies. For some classics, try Roger Zelazny’s Amber books, or Doorways In The Sand. The Fuzzy books, and Lord Kalvan Of Otherwhen by H. Beam Piper. The Snow Queen and sequels by Joan Vinge. The Gaea trilogy Titan, Wizard and Demon by John Varley. Emergence by David R. Palmer. A Greater Infinity by Michael McCollum. Or an obscure novel by Jefferson Swycaffer called Warsprite.
Any of those could be made into better movies than anything Hollyweird has puked up in the last few years. Of course, they’d have to work at realizing the movies’ potential instead of F*king them up or we’d just get more celluloid puke.
———————————
Simon Illyan: “Do you know all those old folk tales where the Count tries to get rid of his only daughter’s unsuitable suitor by giving him three impossible tasks?”
Ekaterin: “Yes…”
Simon: “Don’t ever try that with Miles. Just……don’t.”
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Cherryh’s Foreigner series.
Ooo. Barbara Hambly’s Dragonsbane, or Those Who Hunt the Night. Would be awesome!
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Oh, and Those Who Hunt The Night would be DEAD EASY to translate into visual!
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I remember thinking that same thing when I first read it. “this is written like it should be a movie”
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Honestly, with the fashion for menacing vampires, I cannot think why Hambly’s vampire series didn’t become a series. Perhaps she is just to sensible to let the usual Hollywood creatures mess with her creation.
Such a pity – as it would make a wonderful steampunkish with the Undead yarn…
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James Asher! Gentleman scholar and spy! We need more of those.
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I would prefer the Chanur novels, but they might have to be animated.
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Amber might be hard; it would need a commitment to follow the books (at least as well as Peter Jackson did for tLotR). Doorways was a fun book (my first exposure to Zelazny, courtesy Analog), as was Palmer’s Emergence (again, Analog).
I’d think Doorways could be done reasonably well on a smallish budget, while Emergence would be a mix of easy & harder. The last portion could be done somewhat like the lobotomy of HAL 9000, so zero-g simulations might be easier. Maybe. (Hmm, I wonder what it would cost to get a small studio in orbit.)
Hadn’t considered Varley’s trilogy; that one would be an interesting challenge. Also, Niven and Pournelle’s Footfall would be a great action/adventure movie. Just seeing the environazi’s heads explode when the Orion drive gets activated would be worth the price of admission.
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“Footfall” would have to be at least a trilogy. Would work even better as a 5 year TV series like B5. That book was -packed- with stuff.
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Emergence is only difficult because the whole Cold War background has changed so much. The Wool trilogy is the closest thing emotionally (seriously, it feels like 80s post-apocalyptic fiction more than anything I’ve read in the intervening years), and they had to change the threat to something entirely different.
The biggest issue is actually finding a child actor capable of taking the role. The fact of her size is critically important to the plot, so you’d have to be able to find a smaller youth and filming quickly to not have her growth interfere with the plot, and there are good and needed rules about how much you can film at a time with youth.
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Anime. Solves a multitude of development problems. Now you just need the right voice and voice-acting skills.
I once was in an RPG set in something very much like “emergence”, with several of the player characters discovering they were homo-post-hominem. (“Aftermath!” ruleset with some modifications.) What was extra funny was one of the HPHs. She was played by someone with a 140-ish IQ, who had never been sick a single day in her life. (two of the HPH “tells” from “Emergence”)
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I’d love to see an adaption of Lone Star Planet–not by Hollywood though.
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Of course if Hollywood were to cast Miles, they’d just as likely go the “Wolverine” route and cast a 6’3″ actor to play the canonically short character (or going the other way, cast 5’7″ Tom Cruise to play 6’5″ Jack Reacher). They could make it work for Wolverine so clearly it would also work for Miles, right? Right? (That’s sarcasm, BTW, in case anybody’s wondering.)
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The usual Hollywood method of late is “find a great story with a strong following that is different than what we usually offer. Copy a few shiny bits and paste them on to the same story we’re already telling everywehre. Be shocked it doesn’t work.”
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If I were to see a Zelazny movie, I’d want it to be Lord of Light, one of my favorite SF novels. I’ve tried reading the Amber books several times, and every time, I’m completely clear on what’s happening in the first volume, and somewhere in the middle of the second, it all turns blurry as I read it—both the characters and the plot.
I’m pleased to see a mention of Jefferson Swycaffer; he was one of my players in RPGs for many years, and was consistently entertaining.
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Larry Correia has stated that he’s got at least one book that’s had a contract for either film or television. But nothing’s come of it so far, which isn’t all that unusual in the business.
He’s already been paid, though.
Besides, the current crop of scriptwriters would probably screw up the story. The amount of control that J. K. Rowling had over the scripts for the Harry Potter movies is very unusual. Usually the author leases the rights, and hopes that the end result has at least a faint resemblance to what the author wrote.
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No an exaggeration. Even Diana Galbaldon, Outlander book and Starz series, doesn’t have the same type of control Rowling did. At best she’s employed as a consultant on the scripts and filming. She has stated, many times in print, and verbally, she has absolutely no, none, zip, control. I don’t watch the Starz series (do not pay for it) even when it comes on other options. I do read the books. I do follow some FB private groups where mentioning the Starz series is not forbidden. Interesting discussions on where the series varies from the books, for and against, and attempts to reconcile, justify, the divergences. Too often ends with (more or less) polite agreements to disagree.
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Right after the first season of The Wheel of Time started airing, Brandon Sanderson (aka the guy Jordan picked to finish the book series) wrote on his blog that he’d served as a consultant for the series, but they didn’t use much of the advice he offered.
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“how on Earth do you cast Miles?”
Brad Williams
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“It makes me wonder how they can dress themselves, never mind make enough money to keep the whole racket afloat.”
They don’t dress themselves. They have stylists for that.
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They dress to the left, of course!
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Dono might be seen as problematic by the transgender advocates, because he never says that he always felt himself to be a man; indeed he seems to have functioned quite well as a woman, at least as far as Ivan could tell! He was clearly changing sex for political reasons, in order to gain access to political office. And it was clearly a change of sex, too: He had actual, functional testicles installed, and neither was considered a man before that nor considered himself one. (Bujold didn’t discuss prenatal brain development in the presence or absence of high testosterone, which might make his “maleness” still problematic, but we’re seeing an anatomical and physiological definition.)
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One character, when asked about the change, makes a quiet comment about how Donna must have been very, very angry. Which is perfectly reasonable.
I’d also argue that Donna/Dono is probably very secure in her/his identity and gender is completely secondary to that. “I get the power that has been denied me all my life by switching over? F it, I’ll be male then, if that’s what it takes.” Note that none of this would have been necessary if her brother weren’t a wimp who actually made her his successor, or if her cousin weren’t such a waste of space.
Anyway. Hollywood would torture the concept into their narrow view of what people think of transgender today. (In a world where complete chromosome shifts are possible, you know there would be some people who would change several times just for fun.)
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I don’t think Donna/Dono had a complete body-wide chromosome change. In fact, Ivan asks about it in Chapter 7, and Dono says that the Y chromosomes in his new testicles came from his brother Pierre, but the rest of his body is still XX. A complete retrogenetic change was possible, but was slow and risky (and likely costly), and Donna chose not to go for one.
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But hormonally, the shift is there.
I kind of get the sense that for the character, it was like changing a suit of clothes. And as attractive as the old clothes were, they were done.
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Dono also went through specific training and a lot of work to become male, and was functionally male by the end of it. As I recall, he married one of the Koldelkia girls?
At a basic level, Dono’s change directly contradicts the current trans thing, by asserting that there are biological requirements involved that cannot simply be ignored.
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Regarding Santos, I don’t really have a solution to the asymmetric warfare of the Left. But I acknowledge that it is THE greatest problem. The only impeached president who ever resigned was the hated and reviled Republican, Richard Nixon. We may have to betray certain principals like the Quaker fiancee shooting one of the murderous villains in High Noon, but it’s an even harder sell getting in bed with vile, corrupt villains because they are useful to take down their equally despicable overlords.
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The Republicans are willing to take a “moral victory” (lol) over a political one. Thus they will trade power for appearance. And far too many RINOs do not mind the Donks winning, as they are Donk-adjacent and see their role as containing Republican “yahoos” “for their own good, and ours too”. Some see themselves as getting paid to be “The Washington Generals” and only try to win if the Columbia Globe Trotters piss them off too much. (the “real” WG team actually did so, once.)
The Donks seldom, if ever, make such a trade. Fail to advance Donk power, and you are -gone-. You can go for prestige, but only if it comes with power.
Thus the Donks accumulate power. And wield it for more.
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Democrats have yet to expel Bob Menendez, although the crimes he is being prosecuted for are far worse than anything that Santos may have done. Expelling Santos proved yet again that the Republicans are the stupid party. Just them of them as Charlie Brown stepping up to kick the football being held by Lucy, yet again.
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As for why Hollywood ignores good SF, it’s all about the Benjamins. Accountants from the Ivy League are in charge. Harlan Ellison used to relate how he had had a meeting with a big-shot studio executive and said he didn’t have any ideas currently. The exec. laughed and threw him a bunch of pulp magazines, saying, “These are full of stories. Just take one.”
I don’t know how cheaply Philip K. Dick or his heirs sold the rights, but it must have been almost free. Now Warner Brothers owns DC and Disney owns Marvel and the rights to their hundreds of characters who have been continuously in print for 60 to 80 years. Why would they want material that isn’t free?
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Not necessarily only about the Benjamins…it’s also about people who have always had narrow minds and cramped imaginations. The Harry Potter movie franchise and The Lord of The Rings smashed the idea that fantasy movies can’t make money into several billion dollars’ worth of tiny little pieces. Yet we don’t have any more good movies to follow them (HBO’s Game of Thrones series notwithstanding). And including GoT, these few movies only succeeded because they were respectful renditions of stories that weren’t told by Hollywood.
I believe the reasons are twofold: one, they didn’t think fantasy stories were “real stories” (and probably still don’t), so their fantasy movies failed to follow the rules of narrative and internal consistency, and therefore were failures; two, by the time Potter and LoTR came along, Hollywood was already on its way to being incapable of telling any stories at all.
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And when Amazon screwed the pooch with Rings of Power, they showed that NOT respecting the material would crash it…. again.
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And note that GoT went to pot as soon as the screenwriters and producers ran out of source material and had to come up with their own ending. Heck, it went to pot so badly that most of the folks I know who were OBSESSED with the show back in the good old days barely acknowledge its existence now.
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“What rubbish!”
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Did anyone else notice that within a week of the final episode airing, nobody was talking about it, even to complain?
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Oh I noticed. At my last job, I was one of only a small handful of people who was not OBSESSED with the show. To give you an idea of just HOW obsessed, somebody had put up a “Memorial Wall” with the name and photo of everyone who had died on the show in the office tiki bar (it was a software consulting firm).
THE DAY AFTER the Series Finale… nobody wanted to talk about it. The Memorial Wall was taken down within a week. Barely anyone acknowledged the show’s existence, let alone mentioned the title or complained about the ending.
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I didn’t get past the pilot, not even all the way through that. Read the first book, once. That is it.
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We didn’t have HBO at the time (now I don’t have cable, period) and when the series started I had zero free time, so I checked the first two volumes of the graphic novel adaptation of Book 1 out of the library. Two volumes in, the plot felt like it had barely begun to advance, but a whole bunch of people had been graphically and brutally raped, maimed, mutilated, and/or murdered. Not my cup of tea by a long shot. Returned them to the library, and other than being forced to overhear friends and coworkers rave about the show, that was the extent of my participation in that franchise.
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We don’t/didn’t have HBO either. Xfinity puts out “free” premium weeks occasionally. Caught it then. Didn’t get past the first 15 – 30 minutes, when the youngest gets tossed out of the tower. Nope. I can read about stuff I can’t watch (vampires is a big one. This is another.) So tried the book since such a “big deal”. Double Nope.
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I watched the first episode. My kids had insisted that it was so good, I decided to sit down and watch the whole thing.
They actually didn’t watch it with me. I suspect they were embarrassed to be in the same room when all the sexual abuses happened.
I thought the graphic violence was both excessive, and not necessary. I felt badly for the actresses and actors who played the demeaning roles.
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I avoid he “everyone is shit” stuff. Sure, we all are sinners, but not everyone is utter shit from a human point of view.
If your world view is “everyone is shit”, you have surrendered your own humanity.
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Never saw a minute of Game of Thrones. Have never done HBO because it cost money, and it seemed to just be a place to get high production porn and violence in order to justify its cost. Even if it were a good story, I knew they would throw in a bunch of naked women and/or death/torture in gory detail. Not my thing. As John Hartford sang: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DM6R598w4XY.
Long ago I’d once read a book by Mr. RailRoad Martin and was not impressed, so I had no incentive to care, no matter how much the Acela corridor was impressed.
Long ago, my wife taught me the one-simple-trick™ to avoid wasting time on bad TV. If a TV series premise relies on unravelling a big mystery, don’t waste your time. So seeing the preview of Lost at Comic-Con was enough so that we didn’t waste a minute of our lives on one of those shows that “everyone was talking about”. I enjoy long-form video story-telling IF the journey is at least as entertaining as the destination. The journey can’t just be a continual tease of hints at the big reveal.
The one writer who did it right is JMS. Each season of Babylon 5 has a story arc, and the series as a whole had one. Each season’s arc was satisfactorily resolved by the end of the season, and the seeds of the next story arc were sown before the preceding season wrapped up. B5 was shown twice a week in our market due to syndication, and we watched it both times, the first for sheer enjoyment, the second time to see how it was put together. My wife claimed that was how she learned to write a novel.
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J. K. Rowling apparently had a high degree of control over the HP scripts. The official reason was probably to make sure that none of the scriptwriters wrote something at odds with unrevealed plot points. But the result was that she could nix things in the script she didn’t like.
LotR was all on Jackson, who seems to like the genre. But at the same time, he still made some big changes.
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Re: No new ideas in Hollywood – just saw a trailer that they’re going to reboot/reimagine the original Highlander with the Witcher star in the primary role.
NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!
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Hollywood will do a horrible job, but at least Henry Cavill cares about fantasy and SF and gives it his all. (Short version: horrible script with great acting.)
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The man is a nerd’s nerd…
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The man’s responsible in all ways for the upcoming Warhammer 40,000 content on Amazon. He arranged the deal, and he has control of the content (lesson learned after the Witcher fiasco).
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(Pseudo-highland accent)
There should be only one!
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So in other words, The Kurgan will be the good guy in the reboot.
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Amazing how great the new telescopes are:
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Related to the drift of meaning of “conservative,” I have been thinking of pushing the word “reactionary” to designate the philosophy of protecting current power structures.
Mostly this has been in the relm of education, which I have seen close up by being a teacher. Modern conservatives want to conserve the good of education, and family involvement in what children learn. Since it is about values rather than form, this can lead to some very radical proposals for change in order to fix the very broken system.
Reactionaries on the other hand are very invested in preserving the form and power structures of socialist schools. Whether it is the union boss who was despondent after a pay raise, because he hated school choice more than he loved teachers, or the parent who just reflexively insists that kids must go to public school, reactionaries fail to see how change can be good.
I like to sum it up with, “there is no greater reactionary than a progressive in power.”
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Anybody watching the melt down of the Atlanta Affirmative Action DA ?
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I sure wish perjury was still a crime for liberals.
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What do you mean?
Cancelling Johnny Depp from his hugely popular role publicly for a lie, maintaining (crossed arms, stompy foot) that cancellation even after the lie was exposed as a complete and fully fabricated intentionally slanderous lie, then announcing a new Pirates movie that finally tells the long suppressed story of female lesbian commie pirates of color as the new lead pirate, played authentically with no appropriation, by a female lesbian commie actress of color, instead of Depp in the role which arguably solely built the IP value of the franchise – Are you saying that multimillion dollar movie won’t be a huge moneymaker, instead it’s failure will inevitably result in killing that franchise too, hammering yet another nail in the mouse’s coffin?
Oh.
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If I were a non-institutional shareholder in Disney-ABC I would be livid at how much the woke corporate suits have destroyed shareholder value. Of course the problem is that the institutional investors, such as union and government pension funds, along with some other large funds, are fully on board with the woke nonsense, which is why they keep putting corporate officers in who enable it.
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As it turns out, there are a few shareholders rather upset at what Disney’s been doing. Thus the attempt to get Peltz onto the board.
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You wouldn’t think a mouse would have a coffin that could hold so many nails.
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The female pirate was going to be a redhead version of a new pirate in the ride, I guess in the wife-buying scene. It was rumored that they would cast Amber Heard. But now, magically, it is not.
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By not adapting work by conservative/libertarian creators, the Left can not only suppress their rival ideology, but also maintain the illusion that only people with the correct (i.e. their) beliefs create anything worth adapting.
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Right, but what they’re actually doing is destroying their own income.
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In all truth they are destroying GrandDaddy’s income that they inherited. They will be quite surprised when all those liberals dump them after they no longer have any money. Same with Soros, after they bleed him dry the Democrats will move on to their next victim.
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Only so long as they actually control the only routes for publication.
As it happens, I was just poking around looking for bookstores, and one of the ones near one of the colleges (sorry, sportsfolks, I just like the colleges because they’re cheap to drag my kids to neat museum stuff for free, I don’t keep them straight, I think it’s the one that isn’t a bird) has an instagram. On the instagram was an interesting looking cover on a book that I recognized as Amazon published, so a few minutes later I’m hitting the button to get “Big Sneaky Barbarian” sent to my phone so I can find out if my kids will read it.
And the book store is– obviously, near university town– NOT a conservative type place. But they’ll do weird, and heck maybe the author lives around the area.
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A conservative media firm generating Anime product using the standards of that industry for quality and style could be a real moneymaker.
Ponder, for example, how such might deliver Anime versions of our Hostess’ works, say the USAian storyline.
One might also imagien an Manga version, per haps a pay-per-chapter or simialr subscription.
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It works as long as what they DO produce is worth watching. It isn’t. And people are starting to notice.
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Why kids don’t read:
https://twitchy.com/brettt/2024/02/15/literature-students-told-worship-of-the-written-word-is-white-supremacy-n2392999
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It’s not just that.
It’s probably not even mostly that.
It’s that they don’t see their parents reading for fun, and their high school literature classes not only inflict the most boring literary dreck on them, but then suck all the fun out of those by literary analysis.
That’s been going on for decades.
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You’ll read nothing and be happy.
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“Remember when it was given that no conservatives worked in the arts?”
So let’s scratch the “NO.” I just landed a gig evaluating public arts proposals, so one more leak in the dike.
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YAY
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[You probably still know a lot of people that think that way. Pat them on the head. They’re either old or so conformist that they’ve never examined their assumptions.]
You might want to examine a few of yours as well.
Speaking as an “old” person (67 and counting) I can tell you that conservative old people are disgusted with the status quo as it is currently configured and have no damned intention of conforming with it.
FJB
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I’m about your age. JUST a little younger.
I MEANT the really old, like my inlaws and parents, 90+. It’s not their fault. They live stuck in front of the TV anymore. BUT I was very shocked to find my anti-establishment mom parroting the bs from above. So, I know it’s a thing.
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Mom doesn’t parrot it, exactly. She frets over it. So yes, a thing. Not helpful when she frets over talks of cutting SS (majority of her income, like it is for far too many). Then she’ll blurt out “What’s next? Mandatory suicide?” Thank God she’s managed to miss Canadian MAiD. Which is surprising because she has a number of friends that are US citizens that also carry Canadian passports. I mean, they don’t live in Canada, but still have relatives in Canada, who aren’t exactly “young”. Mom is 89 (for most of this year, also late year birthday).
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Waves.
Also 67 (for most the year, late October birthday).
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Here was a money comment.
“Create? They can’t create”
Has anyone else noticed that all they seem to do these days is re make movies that were blockbusters back in the day? And the new shows are never even close to the old one.
But these days what is.
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To be a little fair, when observing the vast sea of remakes and reboots, that’s the suits. Nothing gets greenlit unless it has the checkboxes checked – name stars signed on, check; successful director signed on, check; built in proven fan base, check; etc.
So Star Wars (the first movie), as an example, would never, not ever, be greenlit today, only carrying one check mark (successful director, with Lucas coming off American Graffiti).
And the suits I have met (admittedly few) were total money grubbing pure hard-dealing businessmen, even the women. Theology didn’t enter into it.
There’s lots else wrong in Hollywoodland, and lots of stupid in the writers rooms, but the business side controls the greelighting.
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We may not be waiting all that long for the movies based on MHI or Honor (or for a proper adaptation of Starship Troopers). PG ran a piece on Sora yesterday.
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Separate post for the link directly to Sora.
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Dan wants to …. he’s played with it some. He’d like to make movies of my stuff, so….
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Doooo eeeet!!!!
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Now I have the trailer for A Few Good Men running through my head.
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Well, if I can conquer the ADD — please Lord. Vivanse would help. Adderal turns off the writing — Caitlin Walsh and I are going to kickstart a series of comics which will help.
BUT I did tell you my AFGM dream, right?
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The NY kangaroo court with the Judge who once ruled against a developer’s project because he didn’t like it even though the law required him to rule in favor of it just decided, as everyone knew he would, to fine Trump $355 million and bar him from business in NY, even though none of the alleged victims of fraud ever made such a claim against him, did their own independent valuations, and all made money on the deals. Not optimistic the partisan upper courts in NY will reverse it.
The purpose of course is to destroy him financially as punishment for beating the Dowager Empress in 2016 and to cripple his ability to finance his 2024 campaign.
The level of lawfare against political opponents Democrats are engaging in is a fundamental danger to the republic.,
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Speed request summary judgement from higher than state court, SCOTUS?
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SCOTUS won’t touch it until state courts are done, and likely not even then, as it was brought under state law, and there needs to be a violation of federal law or a federal right in what NY did for SCOTUS to hear the case.
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The long term effects will include increasing numbers of businesses moving out of states with courts that don’t respect their legal rights. Rather like the early parts of Atlas Shrugged where businesses are moving from the eastern states to Colorado . . .
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If only Colorado were still sane. we’d move to the flatter part.
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Didn’t work for long, though. The stupid followed.
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Within the next 12 months, you will see the federalization of the NY kangaroo process, as many other states jump on the “declare opponents guilty” / no-Jury bandwagon, and soem federal kangaroos try to enforce it broadly.
Because to make a donk victory stick in 2024, the donks have to take both House and Senate. And to do -that- will require removing opponents who are not uniparty/donk-adjacent. They cannot afford/allow a house or senate comittee to dig into the shennaingans. And they absolutely -cannot- allow both House and Senate to be even RINO, as the potential for public demand of impeachment is quite real.
I hope I am wrong. But panicked wounded idiots do crazy desperate things. And I sense that there is a great big golden boot about to drop. Trump isnt playing like someone facing doom.
Imagine if Trump has some really juicy goods to serve up cold.
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Trump was denied a Jury trial, and then denied even a notional trial by judge when the kangaroo declared him summarily guilty. I do believe that the kangaroo in NY has stepped firmly in the cacky.
Amendment 7:
“In Suits at common law, where the value in controversy shall exceed twenty dollars, the right of trial by jury shall be preserved, and no fact tried by a jury, shall be otherwise re-examined in any Court of the United States, than according to the rules of the common law.”
Kangaroo went out of his way to make sure there was no Jury, so that the inevitable Jury finding of “Bullshit!” did not impede further kangaroo antics.
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That’s derogatory to kangaroos. They’re sensible creatures, and keep their noses out of politics.
———————————
Most days, I suspect that we could get a better government by picking 535 people at random. On bad days, I’m certain we’d get a better government by picking 535 people at random from lunatic asylums.
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This could actually work, if our school system taught the law in detail. Any necessary “beurocratic” or “administrative” position is bound from making policy decisions. No clandestine agencies, and require a balanced budget.
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Oh look, another example of government using “private” businesses to get around the Constitution. If you fail to answer (leave blank, put “MYOB”), insurers can and will cancel your insurance. You and your bank will be talking, in addition to everything below.
If you answer falsely, then any incident involving the presence of any unlisted firearm means that you pay premiums and they won’t pay claims. Doesn’t even have to go off. House fire and exploding ammo injures firefighter? You pay damages, they won’t pay claims for anything.
https://bearingarms.com/tomknighton/2024/02/19/california-bill-insurance-companies-gun-registry-n1223867
“The Residential property insurance firearms bill AB-3067 is an addition to Section 2086 of the Insurance Code, and would require insurers to “update the contents of their applications for homeowners’ or renters’ insurance to include the questions regarding the presence, storage, and number of firearms by January 1, 2026.””
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The only solution is mass non-compliance. Good luck with that in CA. If it’s allowed in CA insurers will start putting that clause in all their contract renewals, regardless of actual legislation.
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