CatBus

http://nymag.com/selectall/2017/10/president-trumps-fucking-moron-tweet-presaged-tillerson.html

For the first time in over a decade, the American Bar Association has rated a federal judge nominee “not qualified”. I expect that slow pace should pick up over the next few years.

PM sent. You’re correct that the subtitles included with preservations are typically outdated and don’t include the README or the preferred SUP format subtitles.

DuracellEnergizer said:

CatBus said:

Puggo - Jar Jar’s Yoda said:

I found husezni’s posts entertaining in a sort of “plan 9 from outer space” way.

I always thought about Dr. Bronner’s soap myself.

But Dr. Bronner wanted to unite the world.

And his shift key worked more consistently too. I admit it’s not a perfect analogue.

Puggo - Jar Jar’s Yoda said:

I found husezni’s posts entertaining in a sort of “plan 9 from outer space” way.

I always thought about Dr. Bronner’s soap myself.

Jeeze I’m out for a bit and Warb’s back and husezni’s not. Guess I really am going to eat those minstrels now.

In a more serious answer, the US has a pretty concise constitution and there’s a lot of room for interpretation and laws to fill in the gaps. The specific section leading to this is our second amendment, which is an amendment about militias (in Revolutionary times this seemed relevant), and as a consequence of the need for a militia, about the general public being able to “keep and bear arms” in service of said militia.

The long-running debate is that since militias are obviously anachronisms that have been replaced by standing armies (the closest thing we have to militias is the National Guard, which isn’t really that close at all), what is the point of an amendment about militias?

The answer is amendments to the constitution don’t have to have a point. So this right to “keep and bear arms” has been (after decades of legal wrangling) fully detached from the non-existent militia, which also means that the “well-regulated” clause about the militia has been completely ignored in favor of “completely unregulated” assumption about the arms themselves, and here we are today.

And enough people have been sold on this gun-owning fashion/lifestyle (where entertainment and hero fantasies almost fully replace any actual utility) that between them and the lobbyists for gun manufacturers, there’s no way to impose reasonable regulations on guns in the US.

suspiciouscoffee said:

Trump’s a pretty lousy Fake-Christian. I would know, I’m a pretty good one.

If his Christian followers ever turn on him, that mask will come right off, and the man will set the public image of atheists back decades. We’ll be back to explaining repeatedly that atheists are not all Russian agents, just for a new reason.

SilverWook said:

CatBus said:

boba feta said:

What’s Puggo’s next project?

I hope it involves a 16mm camera, a couple dozen friendly but non-hygienic mice, and a copy of The Phantom Menace.

Actually, skip the camera part.

If there was a 16mm scope TPM out there, I’d be amazed.

Well, my original plan was that he’d use the camera to MAKE a 16mm scope print from the Blu-ray projected on a stained shower curtain or something, and the mice would add seasoning.

But upon reflection, just siccing the mice on the TPM Blu-ray and leaving it at that seemed fine too.

SilverWook said:

I meant another Trump administration departure.

Dangit, those minstrels are coming back up.

I think song names – at least in these films – require the sort of deep background knowledge I’m trying not to require. i.e. I’m trying to avoid even using uncommon character names in the SDH cues. i.e. instead of “Jerjerrod” I’d say “Commander”.

Certainly whether it’s live music vs tracked music is relevant, and things like loud, soft, and some sort of adjective. I guess the test is – if you don’t know anything at all about Star Wars, how would you describe the music in a way that helps add to the film what the music adds, but without actually being able to hear the music.

It turns out it’s a less critical problem than I thought, since so much of the music is talked over and therefore loses any opportunity to subtitle without getting really crowded.

boba feta said:

What’s Puggo’s next project?

I hope it involves a 16mm camera, a couple dozen friendly but non-hygienic mice, and a copy of The Phantom Menace.

Actually, skip the camera part.

SilverWook said:

And another one bites the dust.

I feel like we just ate Sir Robin’s minstrels.

Warbler said:

*sigh*

SilverWook said:

Control the weather? Did Cobra build another Weather Dominator? And does that make Obama Cobra Commander? 😉

I’m afraid it’s a real conspiracy theory, although it probably did crib heavily from GI Joe. Luckily you can’t tie everything to GI Joe. Just try to link GI Joe to the news that Trump isn’t showing any concern at all about the Russian military vandalizing the tombs of Napoleon, Caesar, Hannibal, and Attila the Hun. Can’t be done.

SilverWook said:

There didn’t seem to be any crazy Federal Govt. is going to take over Texas! talk with all the disaster relief and troops pouring in.

To some degree, sure. You don’t hear so much rumbling anymore from the people who were always on about Obama using HAARP to control the weather, either.

But I absolutely believe you’ll see this in the 2018 election: “Look at that out-of-control unresponsive federal government full of incompetent, corrupt politicians – that’s why you should vote Republican in 2018! Benghazi!”

Just looked him up. Yikes, forgot he had that alt-right tattoo on his face. Looks like he’s a contender for Special Counsel after Mueller gets fired.

We’ve had lots of mini-Trumps running all over the country for years and nobody paid them much attention because they were such obvious incompetent, sociopathic nutcases. Now we’ve got one in the Senate as well as the White House (not to mention governor of Maine). What’s Charlie Manson up to these days?

DuracellEnergizer said:

Not for me, nope. I don’t believe I’ve listened to a band/artist yet with an oeuvre I love wholly and completely.

I dunno. I half-expected this thread to turn top-heavy with one-hit wonders. You get the single to Taco’s Puttin’ on the Ritz and Right Said Fred’s I’m Too Sexy and that’s two complete sets right there, and you haven’t even spent a whole dollar yet. Okay, maybe they technically have other songs, but really who’d know?

TV’s Frink said:

Also, including “the” as part of the sorting?

TV’s Frink said:

you are a monster.

Agreed. I’m not sure if that’s the worst thing ever, but it’s in the running.

America’s pledges of allegiance and various showings of national spirit are pretty extreme on a world scale as far as I can tell – several Germans I know were visibly shaken and alarmed at what they saw going on in grade-school American classrooms.

Also, over-the-top patriotism knows no irony. Your typical guy pledging allegiance to the American flag while wearing a Confederate flag is completely unaware that they are mutually exclusive.

yhwx said:

https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-nfl-protests-may-be-unpopular-now-but-that-doesnt-mean-theyll-end-that-way/

We don’t have any polling specifically about Trump’s recent NFL comments, but a Quinnipiac University poll from 2016 found that only 38 percent of those surveyed approved of players choosing not to stand during the anthem. But while these NFL protests may be unpopular right now, particularly with white people, similar protests in the past — involving race, civil rights and varying definitions of patriotism — came to be viewed much more positively after the fact.

Marches for civil rights during the 1960s were generally seen negatively at the time. As the Washington Post noted last year, most Americans didn’t approve of the Freedom Riders, the March on Washington in 1963 or other similar protests. In fact, many Americans thought that these protests would hurt the advancement of civil rights. In addition, but many Americans held mixed-to-negative views of civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. In a 1966 Gallup survey, 63 percent of Americans gave King a negative score on a scale from -5 to +5. Now, the civil rights marches are viewed as major successes, and just 4 percent of Americans rated King negatively on that same scale in a 2011 Gallup poll.

Many Americans also viewed gay rights marchers during the AIDS epidemic negatively. According to Business Insider, the March on Washington for Lesbian, Gay and Bi Equal Rights and Liberation in April 1993 drew more than 800,000 people fighting against discrimination and seeking more funding for AIDS research. But in a Newsweek survey conducted at the time, only 23 percent of Americans thought that the demonstration did more good than harm in the fight for gay rights. Today, gay rights organizations celebrate the march, same-sex marriage is legal and much of the platform demanded by protesters seems mainstream.

Nothing succeeds like success. And King was such a huge success that, after enough time passed, the very people who opposed the principles he stood for held him up as an unassailable moral standard for their own cause – and as long as nobody actually bothered to find out what King thought about these matters, it worked.

Can you see it in 2047? Senator Donald Beauregard Bannon of the InfoWars Party claims that if the sainted Colin Kaepernick were alive today, he would certainly be aghast at liberal Republican-appointed justices like Sam Alito, who say police may have some sort of obligation to provide medical assistance to the people they shoot.

I’ve done an initial run of cleaning up and filling out the SDH subtitles for Star Wars. I was surprised to find that I added or changed about 100 subtitles. I’m honestly still not sure how well subtitling music works in general, but it at least solves the problem of “there are so many scenes where nobody says anything and they’re not even doing anything, just looking at the sunset or getting medals put on their necks”. At least with these revised subtitles, you’ll be aware that music is a major component of the film, which is something. And in just as many cases, I can’t subtitle the music due to subtitles for dialogue/other audio taking priority, so it’s not omnipresent – mostly for music-only scenes.

Warb’s jumped to extreme conclusions before, but we’ve always brought him back from the brink. His posts were hardly the most inflammatory ones in that discussion IMO, they were just the most outrageous posts that people bothered to read. I hope he returns.

Is it tax time already?