CatBus

Warbler said:

Mrebo said:

Well said, ender.

Particularly how certain views take on a popularity that shuts out dissent.

As for ignoring important issues, this caught my eye.

If the Republicans want me to judge them fairly, they need to stop supporting Trump.

Agreed. At some point, praising the 1930’s German pension system, even if based entirely in objective fact and genuine policy analysis, is a distraction. If the policy argument truly has merit (and I think the FISA one does), you can still make it after the Nazis have been defeated.

Wait, so nobody’s killing anyone with a shovel? Is that what we’ve concluded now?

Mrebo said:

CatBus said:

https://twitter.com/JohnCornyn/status/954739322388930562

Not enough facepalms in the world. I don’t know what’s worse: that after a US Senator was informed he was personally helping spread Russian propaganda, the Senator’s first instinct was to pretend he wasn’t just personally implicated and yell “Fake News!” at the media, or that, for his followers, that’s probably a good enough reaction.

Favorite Twitter response to his suggestion that “the Press” in particular needs to work to avoid spreading so much Russian propaganda on Twitter:

Funny. Most people only use one “s” when abbreviating “president.”

I don’t see any allegation of “Fake News!” here.

“All of us need to step up to meet this challenge, especially the Press”

Emphasis mine. So he’s saying the press are more susceptible to Fake News than others, even when the evidence was just handed to him about who needs to take the most care.

We should keep in mind what counts here as “personally helping spread Russian propaganda”: something as small as liking a tweet that might have been put forward by a Russian agent. I don’t attribute lots of blame to a person who likes a tweet, worse retweets it, or horror-of-horrors follows the account that says stuff that sounds good.

Might have been put forward by a Russian agent? Might? Hm. Liking and following add legitimacy, especially when you’re a public figure who supposedly knows enough to distinguish facts from propaganda.

I think these kinds of attempts by foreign powers are feeble.

It doesn’t matter if they can’t fool people who know their ass from their elbow (on the left and right), it matters that they can apparently fool certain Senators and Presidents with ease.

PM sent.

https://twitter.com/JohnCornyn/status/954739322388930562

Not enough facepalms in the world. I don’t know what’s worse: that after a US Senator was informed he was personally helping spread Russian propaganda, the Senator’s first instinct was to pretend he wasn’t just personally implicated and yell “Fake News!” at the media, or that, for his followers, that’s probably a good enough reaction.

Favorite Twitter response to his suggestion that “the Press” in particular needs to work to avoid spreading so much Russian propaganda on Twitter:

Funny. Most people only use one “s” when abbreviating “president.”

Check your PM’s.

yhwx said:

Some federal employees get some days off. The actual economic and long-term political effect is actually minimal.

Depends how long it goes. A few days is a holiday weekend. A few weeks or months and it’s a different story.

TM2YC said:

Your Government shutting down your Government is f**king insane no matter the reason, explanation, or persons to blame. Just checking that y’all know that.

Sanest thing it’s done in the last year. But yes, still fucking insane on an absolute scale. Grading this government on a curve is a mistake.

Mrebo said:

CatBus said:

Mrebo said:

CatBus said:

Mrebo said:

TV’s Frink said:

Good. Democrats need to stand up for what is right, since Republicans never will.

During the 2013 shutdown, Chuck Schumer said:

I believe in immigration reform. What if I persuaded my caucus to say I’m going to shut the government down, I’m going to not pay our bills unless I get my way. It’s a politics of idiocy, of confrontation, of paralysis.

It’s fun to find examples of hypocrisy like this, even if one thinks Schumer is/was wrong.

Luckily Schumer has no power to shut the government down. Even if he convinces every Democrat to go along with him, the Republicans can keep the government running, if they want to. Such is the power of the minority party, post-filibuster.

The filibuster still exists. That’s why the funding bill isn’t progressing.

Ah forgot they hadn’t axed it yet for spending bills. But then, if they can remove that filibuster with a simple majority vote just like all the filibusters they’ve already removed, you wonder why they’re not just doing it like they did any time they got tripped up with any of the others.

I think some still believe in the Senate as an institution, the value of compromise, or just fear the future of Democrats using unfettered power in the future. It is strange we’re not hearing much on the filibuster in this context. I had honestly forgotten the state of the filibuster too, but the predominant story in the media is that its all Republicans fault because they’re the majority party.

IMO plenty of news outlets seem to be pinning this on the Dems. Most of the places I see “blaming the Republicans” is in meta-blame pieces about who the voters are likely to blame, which is really different than actual blame.

Mrebo said:

CatBus said:

Mrebo said:

TV’s Frink said:

Good. Democrats need to stand up for what is right, since Republicans never will.

During the 2013 shutdown, Chuck Schumer said:

I believe in immigration reform. What if I persuaded my caucus to say I’m going to shut the government down, I’m going to not pay our bills unless I get my way. It’s a politics of idiocy, of confrontation, of paralysis.

It’s fun to find examples of hypocrisy like this, even if one thinks Schumer is/was wrong.

Luckily Schumer has no power to shut the government down. Even if he convinces every Democrat to go along with him, the Republicans can keep the government running, if they want to. Such is the power of the minority party, post-filibuster.

The filibuster still exists. That’s why the funding bill isn’t progressing.

Ah forgot they hadn’t axed it yet for spending bills. But then, if they can remove that filibuster with a simple majority vote just like all the filibusters they’ve already removed, you wonder why they’re not just doing it like they did any time they got tripped up with any of the others.

Mrebo said:

TV’s Frink said:

Good. Democrats need to stand up for what is right, since Republicans never will.

During the 2013 shutdown, Chuck Schumer said:

I believe in immigration reform. What if I persuaded my caucus to say I’m going to shut the government down, I’m going to not pay our bills unless I get my way. It’s a politics of idiocy, of confrontation, of paralysis.

It’s fun to find examples of hypocrisy like this, even if one thinks Schumer is/was wrong.

Luckily Schumer has no power to shut the government down. Even if he convinces every Democrat to go along with him, the Republicans can keep the government running, if they want to. Such is the power of the minority party, post-filibuster.

Now if the Republicans can’t even convince themselves that they should keep the government running, that’s another thing entirely.

TV’s Frink said:

hairy_hen said:

I pretty much checked out a while ago and haven’t seen any reason to check back in. As far as I’m concerned, the whole thing can only ever be a zombie franchise until the movies that actually made it what it is - namely, the original unaltered films - are given justice. The longer it continues in this zombie state, the more irrelevant it becomes.

This makes no sense to me.

I dunno, maybe you need to dive down further into the zombie metaphor to get it. “Zombie franchise” describes a franchise that keeps shuffling along after the thing that gave it life and soul is simply dead, gone, and no more. Seems apt so far. The more numerous the zombies become, and the longer they are around, the easier it is to dismiss it as just another irrelevant monster, forgetting that it once had a life and soul of its own. Still very true. And the only way to kill it is with a shovel to the neck. Yeah, okay, I admit that part could use some work. But it’s still way better than a car metaphor.

Giving up is relative. I stopped going to see Star Wars films for myself after AOTC (and that was as a “they can’t all suck that bad!” gambit rather than a genuine desire), but I’ve seen some of the films after that anyway.

ROTS I saw because a friend had two free tickets and we had a history of going to see really crappy films together (Alien vs Predator, etc), and he wanted me to go, as a sort of lark. So I stupidly said “Sure” and man was that a step down from Alien vs Predator. We did not even get ironic enjoyment from that one.

Now I’ve got kids, and so I go when they want to go. What I’ve seen of the sequels hasn’t made me want to go back for myself, but I’ll likely go back one way or the other. Although if the sequels ever get anywhere near as bad as the prequels, I’ll probably just opt to wait in the lobby while the kids watch.

“The future is already here — it’s just not very evenly distributed.”

Personally, I wouldn’t do what I do if I thought there was a very realistic chance these films would be preserved via normal channels at any point in our lifetimes. So everything I do here is under the assumption that we are the only preservationists these films will see for many, many decades.

Because we’re acting in an unofficial capacity, we can’t do as much as official channels can to preserve this content. However, one thing that’s relatively easy to do is distribute it broadly, to increase the chances it will survive. In biological terms, because we’re not strong enough to be K-strategists, we are instead r-strategists.

Project Threepio in many ways was designed to amplify this strategy for other preservation projects. To make existing projects have more appeal beyond the English-speaking world than they already did, increasing distribution outside the linguistic and legal boundaries of the English-speaking world, with the goal of long-term survival of these films on a global scale, even if legal forces manage to effectively erase them within certain regions.

I’ve designed Project Threepio as a “torch-passable” project. While I’m certainly still engaged in maintaining it, I’ve also fully documented my processes and made available all of the tools I use to do everything in the project. It would be fairly easy for someone, years from now, to download Project Threepio, dig into the gory details, and become the next CatBus.

Mrebo said:

yhwx said:

So… government shutdown, anybody?

A government shutdown isn’t a very big deal. That’s why Democrats feel like risking it over one (non-budget) issue. I’m mostly put off by the media’s disparate treatment of Democrats threatening shutdown compared to the Republicans in 2013.

Very much agreed. In 2013, the Republicans held the House and the Democrats held the Senate (albeit with the Republicans having filibuster power, so some degree of Republican buy-in was needed there, too), so the 2013 shutdown could be fairly characterized as a failure of the parties to compromise (blame may not be apportioned equally, but still). The media gave all the blame to the Republicans.

But today, the Democrats don’t have the power to shut anything down (the filibuster is dead and gone), all they can do is not bail the Republicans out when the Republicans shut down the government, but the media is very much treating it like the Democratic Party has the final say in the matter. “Elections have consequences” cuts both ways, and doubly so after you throw out the filibuster – when you control every branch of the Federal government and a huge majority of the state governments as well, blaming the other party is never going to sound exactly credible. But the media’s still carrying that water.

PM sent.

Lots of hay being made over today’s special election result in Wisconsin. Special elections are special in many ways – because they are so few and they are not aligned with other elections, they should not be seen as representative of how other elections might go. Because turnout is typically much lower for special elections than even for off-year elections, they favor Republican candidates more than any other type of election. But still, here’s this result compared against the other three special elections with candidates from both parties that were decided today.

WI-SD10 27 pt swing to Democrats (D pickup)
IA-HD06 18 pt swing to Democrats (R hold)
SC-HD99 13 pt swing to Democrats (R hold)
WI-AD58 25 pt swing to Democrats (R hold)

Those numbers are so big, especially considering the general Republican advantage in special elections, that I’m having trouble following my own advice to ignore them. However, there’s one extra bit of doom and gloom in the data to consider–the biggest Democratic gains were in the reddest districts. In other words, swing districts swung less than safe ones. So theoretically, a national 12-point swing to the Democrats could result in no change, or even Republicans gaining seats, if most of that swing is absorbed in districts so red that it doesn’t change the outcome of the election.

yhwx said:

I found this interesting:

https://overcast.fm/+HIn0qOVYY/43:09

It’s basically a guy who’s an expert in game theory telling us that we should actually feel safer that Trump’s in control of the North Korea situation. It’s actually a bit more reasonable than it sounds.

Game theory explains Nixon. The Peter principle explains Trump.

Matching resolutions is recommended more strongly now. Thanks for testing for being our player bug field tester.

Stinky-Dinkins said:

[Editor’s Note: Our friend Petr “Harmy” Harmáček, who some of you may know for his fine Star Wars Despecialized efforts, worked on the visual effects for Blade Runner 2049 at UPP in Europe and confirmed to us that they were done in full native 4K resolution. Chris McLaughlin, CG supervisor at the project’s VFX lead Double Negative, says they delivered their VFX at 3.4K.]

Holy shit.

For some reason, Harmy’s low profile on this reminds me of Nikola Tesla (in film):

The first time I changed the world, I was hailed as a visionary. The second time I was asked politely to retire. The world only tolerates one change at a time. And so here I am. Enjoying my “retirement”.

PM sent.

PM sent.

Mrebo said:

DominicCobb said:

NeverarGreat said:

DominicCobb said:

The only open hostility towards religion I see comes from Republicans against Muslims.

I’ve seen quite a bit of left wing hostility towards organized religion, so it exists, especially in academia.

I meant elected officials.

An obvious and recent example was Senator Feinstein’s questioning of Amy Coney Barrett. You can find apologists for Feinstein’s inappropriate questions, but I guarantee Democrats would burst if a Republican asked a comparable question of a Muslim.

Yeah, that was nasty. I can understand why you might have to dig into unrelated matters when you’re questioning someone without any experience to take into consideration, but dig somewhere else.

moviefreakedmind said:

chyron8472 said:

moviefreakedmind said:

Liberals and Democrats are not hostile to religion and Christianity in particular.

Not all, but many are.

Can you tell me why Hillary, being a Methodist herself, did not bolster her appearance as a person of the Christian faith? Can you tell me why Obama, being a member of United Church of Christ, did not openly refute accusations that he was Muslim rather than letting people carry on forever with it?

For my money, it’s because it doesn’t target their base.

It’s actually probably because they realized that it had no relevance to their candidacies and had no bearing on their abilities as potential presidents. As for the Muslim theory, I’m assuming he didn’t refute it because it was a psychotic conspiracy theory only believed by insane people or rightwing hacks.

There’s a continuum between the minimum religious exposition deemed politically required, and the maximum deemed non-ostentatious, and nearly all Democrats and Republicans can be found somewhere on this continuum. Not all Democrats are crowded at one end with Republicans at the other, although there’s probably a gradual trend that way. Neither Clinton nor Obama made any sort of secret at all of their religious affiliation, they just didn’t trumpet it at regular intervals. All the time and effort you spend fighting insane conspiracy theories can’t be spent reaching out to sane people who may actually vote for you.

 
…As opposed to Republicans, who (and this is an enormous pet peeve of mine) co-opt their so-called Christianity for political points.

Yes and this is worse than not pretending to be religious. The fact that liberals are accepting of candidates that leave God out of their rhetoric is more respectable than people that accept predatory and adulterous conmen like Donald Trump because he pretended to be a Christian.

I don’t really think anyone was fooled. Just look at the man – his words, his actions, his history. Some of his attempts at remedial Bible-thumping on the campaign trail were so laughably inept that Mr. Atheist over here cringed to hear them. I’m sure there’s true believers out there that think Holy Water can be wrung out of his hotel bedsheets, but for most observers, he was an honorary member of their tribe, a fellow traveler, someone with the same goals. And those goals were just an unrelated demographic overlap with his religious supporters. He was the all racism all the time candidate, and that was the only appeal he needed. IMO the Christian appeal was just a fig leaf so that his voters could add some sort of moral plausibility to their decision.

Words mean what you want them to mean. Today’s small government conservative is a classical liberal. And also, as of Trump, a Democrat 😉

The problem for small government conservatives is that they’ve never really had a party to call home. Reagan actively courted libertarians and Republicans since then have worked small government sound bites into all their speeches, but they never actually were much of a small government party when they were in power – only promoting small government policies that extended much beyond tax cuts as a means of opposing Democrats when they were out of power.