I feel like this entire post should just be summed with “Erik 'Blackwater' Prince is getting involved in the Ecuadorian elections” and then some kind of meme face with a tinfoil hat.

Occam’s razor would say Trump doesn’t like trade deficits. The tariffs punish trade deficits, end of story. But that doesn’t explain why is Trump talking about annexing Canada? Why do we want Greenland when Denmark has said it’s open to letting the US militarize it to our heart’s content? That would be sufficient if controlling the GIUK Gap had its traditional focus of protecting the logistics for the US to more securely defend Europe. It’s not sufficient if America plans to protect the Atlantic and let Europe fend for itself. If the invitation (née invasion) of our military by Mexico is just about the cartels then why the odd focus on the Panama Canal? Even the name of the tariffs, Liberation Day, suggest a grander plan. I propose that the “liberation” refers to America’s commitments to protect trade routes not in our national interest. The seemingly petty and childish renaming of the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of Americas hints at a plan where America doesn’t protect the Western Hemisphere à la The Monroe Doctrine. But one where it dominates it à la the Russian concept of the near abroad.1

The circles on this map represent the focus of our naval strategy since 1890 when OCaptain Alfred Thayer Mahan published “The Influence of Sea Power upon History, 1660–1783.” And they’re a map to the actual motivations behind many of our geopolitical foci. You don’t see much attention paid to places that aren’t near a circle. And places where America focuses what many consider a confusing amount of confusion (eg “Why are we fighting to keep the Vietnamese free?” or “Lots of places have oil. Why did the entire world declare war to liberate Kuwait?”) it’s right next to a circle. What were the members of the Houthi PC Small Group most concerned about? Trade through the aptly named Gate of Grief.

Just because it reflects who we are trading with most heavily doesn’t mean that’s not the motivation. They didn’t say tariffs are controlled by the formula. They could have just chosen a formula that fit their needs. Why bother with a formula at all? I put it that the formula was chosen because it moved our supply chain to Peru from Bangladesh. While maintaining the appearance of equal treatment. And whatever nation-by-nation tariff renegotiations happen will decrease reliance on the straits of Malacca and Taiwan and move trade to countries not dependent on the South China Sea and the water in the 9 Dash Line. And if Europe doesn’t militarize to the point that it could dominate total war with Russia and neutralize Iran’s ability to cut off trade through the Red Sea2 we’re going to use tariffs to move our supply chains away from anything that requires sea transport through the Mediterranean from the east.3

Of course some of it is just tariffs. Trump likes tariffs and always has. But there’s Trump the individual. And there’s Trump the administration. And Trump’s pro-tariff America first attitude make him the person to support this. And it seems like Trump would like a flat global 10% tariff regardless. And there’s plenty of evidence of Trump saying this for decades.

But an adjustable plan to move to more or less autarky depending on the active participation of the rest of the West explains the focus on tackling bilateral trade deficits rather than applying actual reciprocal tariffs. And the focus on consolidating direct power over the Western Hemisphere. A fully prepared and united NATO provides a deterrent and enough power to keep supply chains open during war time. But if Europe refuses to participate in the survival of the West then America has to be prepared to retreat to our side of the oceans while we ride out the New Chinese Century. Which is probably the modern version of outright tribute4

But so far Trump’s threats to disengage has motivated European politicians to use Trump as a boogie man to excuse remilitarizing. And for Britain to reverse its trade debacle from Brexit. Conspiracy or completely rational response to erratic stimuli is an article of faith.

Also of note what’s missing in the above map is global warming opening up the Arctic trade routes. Maybe you remember the quest for the Northwest Passage from American history class. But for a century it was the Holy Grail of navigation. And it’s likely a massive opportunity for natural resources.

Owning Greenland gives us power projection all the way across the Atlantic. And with England as a junior partner gives us total control of the GIUK Gap. And controlling Greenland and Canada combined would leave the Arctic divided between the US and Russia. But people have been talking about the Arctic as an undefended front for decades now. It’s why Putin built the Trefoil Base on Franz Josef Land

It’s worth noting that during Trump’s White House dressing down of Zelensky Trump mentioned how well Poland was doing. And the Nordic countries in general seem to be pulling their weight as well. I’ll have to check the tariffs they’re getting. But between UK and the Nordics it ties up the ports in St. Petersburg and Murmansk (the home to Russia’s entire(?) nuclear submarine fleet).

I was thinking about how with India being a paper tiger and an unprepared Europe even an American victory could effectively be a loss, in much the same way that all the European victors of WW2 lost their empires. For England and France their victory was more Pyrrhic than the victory for which the term was coined. Winning a war against China could easily see the destruction of the international American order. And a loss .

All this over some chips? No, but if we don’t defend Taiwan it sends our partners in the Indo-Pacific that they’re on their own. Nine-dash line, which is essentially just saying control the trade through the Strait of Malacca.

Mearsheimer has said that he’s often invited to speak in China because they’re his kind of people. If China acts according to 19th c IR norms then the world defaults to that. The modern international order is a fragile thing that assumes the incentives for maintaining it are too good for anyone to defect from. But the Russian history that lead to Putin’s rise proves that in post-Communist countries oligarchs prefer direct power to economic power. If the economists were right the bad managers of the oligarchs would have sold to good managers. And markets would have kept order.5

We now have military access to Mexico without a formal declaration of war.6 The influence options are obvious. But less obvious it means we can (might be able to) now create two zones of Latin American immigration controls. The current massive one on our border. And the tiny one on Mexico’s southern border. With the attention paid to Panama being an alternative immigration chokepoint if Mexico didn’t give us military access that we have a pretense to place a military presence in. But which got dropped now that Mexico gave us the preferable option of being able to check South American immigration at Mexico’s southern border. And the power to deal with Mexican immigration and cartel issues in Mexico itself. But if a hot war breaks out I suspect we’ll hear Panama get brought up again.

Now, this fits with Elon Musk’s repeated statements that long range fighters are a waste. And we should switch to attritable drones. This didn’t make any sense when you consider our current needs in the Pacific are to be able to keep our aircraft carriers half an ocean away out of reach of China’s land based missile defense. But shorter range drones seem to make armchair sense if you’re only concerned with protecting the American littorals.

Why tariff our allies? To obfuscate the most important targets of the tariffs. And should Europe refuse to invest in self sufficiency then they’re not actually allies, but part of a one sided suzerainty , where we provide order and protection. But they don’t fulfill their obligations. And it introduces a dash (or more correctly, gallon) of Madman Theory to keep our enemies guessing.

Whenever you hear “freedom of navigation” it’s code for controlling trade chokepoints; First Island Chain; reviving WW2 military bases

I have a blindfold on and a hand on a bill, four hands on four legs, and a hand on a wide flat tail and saying this is a platypus. Maybe it’s an elephant. But the shape of this thing says platypus. Or these are all chaotic independent moves by this president and there’s no center there ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Maybe India is genuinely concerned about Tibet because it’s outraged over the treatment of an old man who likes to have boys suck his tongue and wants him restored to absolute god-king status of an isolated mountain kingdom.

But I’m going to bet the main concern is the control of the Brahmaputra and Ganges Rivers’ sources. And the potential to create water insecurity for 400M - 600M people. India faces the problem that anything short of victory by America could see China using water as a bargaining chip against it. A trump card whose only counter, failing an unrealistic total air superiority over the Himalayas, is nuclear threat7.

*********************

If DOGE’s AI is used on Venezuela’s government to root out fraud and waste it’s going to be a pretty good indicator that this concept is correct.

********************************

This is almost certainly true

But there’s an interesting alternative where America helps the Iranian revolutionaries by rolling out our suite of drones for more on-the-ground close-air-support. Both as a demonstration of and learning experience for the American military. Along side the more traditional air power for big targets.

Further

This is a good and smart assessment

But it might lack context. That when you look at recent events holistically then the obvious fact that both countries we’ve recently made undeclared war against are suppliers of oil to China. And this could be shaping operations in preparation for/ deterrent to China attacking the Oriental democracies.

Extremely Tarantino voice: You just don’t get Conan the Barbarian. So it’s the late Bronze Age. And all the weapons and armor is made of bronze. But some peoples have started discovering iron. And they’re like what’s the riddle of iron? And they’re worshipping the god of hammers who would later go on to be Thor and merge with the sky god to become Zeus. So they worship the hammer god “Crom” but is going to become Thor who lives in the ground and they’ll become dwarves. And along comes these nomadic steppe warriors who are going to be a pain in the ass for civilization for the next 6,000 years. And their thing is they’re the first horse lords. In 1,000 years they’ll develop the chariot. But for now they’re just riding bareback. And not just with the women they’ve captured… But seriously, stirrups won’t be invented for like 3,000 more years. But even with that just having the best horse technology means that they’re conquering everything. These are the proto-Indo Europeans. But not just any tribe of the PIE. Their leader is on the cutting edge. He knows that steel is the future. They’re completely replacing populations. Capture the men, enslave the women and children. But what do you do once you become king and don’t want to fight anymore? You set yourself up as the priestly class. Because that’s the answer to the riddle of steel. That the steel isn’t what makes it deadly. It’s the power to compel people to wield it. It is calling a deer a horse. It’s why a rabble is more likely to mutiny than educated soldiers. You’ve instilled bitch in their hearts and they fundamentally respect authority. But Conan isn’t the son of a king. Or if he was Thulsa Doom killed him when Conan was still a boy. He’s part of the rabble. He will kill the priest and free Fukuyama’s Last Men, as symbolized by the daughter of the king, from the subservience that has been instilled in them since they were children.

Rough idea: Anarcho-capitalists and the woke kind of have a yin and yang thing for why the social contract needs to be rewritten due to LARPing outrageous oppression. AnCap is simply taxes are slavery. Woke has more bespoke idpol based ones like one I heard in the wild that catcalling is the same as r@pe. And then they both have the same solution in a form of fantasy safe spaces. One is male coded that guns would create a safe space to live freely. And the other female where safe spaces can be created by institutions. But not institutions based on rules. But institutions based on social hierarchy often explicitly calling for the head of that hierarchy to embrace "different ways of knowing" and being lead by women. And both are embraced by bored people looking for utopias.

The reason Sidney Sweeney is dominating the culture so much lately is that she's done some interviews recently where she's clearly the opposite of a bimbo. She's sexual without it being quote/ unquote "whorish". By which I mean she's not doing it like the Kardashians. Where the narrative providing the context of their nudity is their personal sex lives. Sweeney’s sexuality is displayed in the context of making and selling her art. Which has always been treated at least somewhat differently.

And her sexuality doesn't come with a social agenda. She's not making a political statement with it. There's no lectures about empowerment. Obviously, I can’t read her mind. But the persona she presents is that she draws empowerment from a variety of other sources. Success as an actress. Success at school (she was her school’s valedictorian). And most recently her success as a producer. Her sexuality is presented as the vehicle of her success. Not as the source of her value. So she doesn’t need everyone to bite their tongues like when women say they dress provocatively because it’s empowering. It’s not. It’s trading their sexuality for attention. For the professionally hot specifically attention for a career usually related to using that attention to reflect it towards product promotion. And if they didn’t have the sexuality they’d be fairly unremarkable otherwise. But in Sweeney’s case the products she’s promoting are increasingly her own.

Having other skills means she doth not need to protest too much about it. She can just be normal and smiling and promoting her projects. And when interviews do veer off the promotion of the project she often just talks about how much she liked school.

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IDK much about sports stuff. But it seems like all the sports nepo babies are demonstrating a kind of what I'm calling "carrot eugenics." If you think of sterilizations and the ahem... "other event" as a stick. Professional sports is the carrot.

And, obviously, physical fitness has always been a selector for finding a mate. And no one would call that eugenics. That’s selection. But not since the development of agriculture has there been such a constant reward system with such high stakes. Like, yes, warfare greatly rewards physical prowess. But war is actually not very frequent. For most of history warfare was fought by formations and was actually much more about morale than just physical prowess. And it was mostly stick eugenics. Being the greatest combatant commoner in the army didn’t make you fabulously wealthy. And even if you were a commoner and killed the right person in a battle and got made a noble. The next generation’s greatest pressure for marriage was political, not prowess in battle.

The reason I mentioned the Paleolithic hunters before is because like sports the need to rely on physical prowess was required constantly. And the size of your harem and children you could support depended on how much meat you could catch on a regular basis. And it’s worth noting that the average height of Paleolithic hunter-gatherers was slightly taller than modern people.

Modern professional sports is similar. And to point this out it’s worth noting that before radio and especially television revolutionized the business model professional sports wasn’t a highly paid profession. Professional baseball and football players weren’t rich men. The stories about the athletes in the first Olympics, while obviously amateurs, they were in many cases just regular people. Radio changed this. Then television took it to a new level. Now the athletes have all the money in the world. And advancements in the science of training means they can hone their children’s natural abilities from a young age.

I see a future without regulations that separate residential from commercial real estate. The libertarian longhouse. Work from home and being in the office are inseparable. The future version of a company town is an apartment building owned by the company. You know all your neighbors because they’re the people you work with every day like a Medieval village. You don’t strive for the corner office but the 2 bedroom apartment. You don’t commute from a studio apartment to work from a cubicle. Your home is your cube. And that cube is your office. This doesn’t cost the company money because they no longer rent office space. Instead they just have to hire a property manager for the real estate division of their company. The poorest and richest don’t live in the building and commute in to work. They both have privacy outside of the panopticon. The community is all comprised of the vast middle.

First thought on MAY DECEMBER is can we have a movie that doesn’t have a character in the entertainment industry in it? Hollywood has become an ouroboros

7th grade is an interesting choice. Still two years before even ancient Jews considered a boy a man. A few years older and it’s an age where the idea is a popular SNL skit starring Pete Davidson. And the age President Macron of France was when he started an affair with his 40 year old teacher who became his wife. 7th grade is a choice that makes it clear they didn’t want anyone thinking about the morality of age difference. And they just wanted to focus on the character study.

It does raise some questions on the morality of Juliane Moore’s friends though. Which is a great question for a character driven movie which this clearly is. I’m hoping by the end we see how Natalie Portman chooses to play her.

I get that the story is solemn. But I think a more realistic portrayal is if people were making off color jokes. Like make it clear that some people find it cringe. But this store owner could be a good place for that. Maybe a scene in a bar later. Maybe talking to the kids’ schoolmates. But I feel like this town would have a ton of local jokes about them. There should even be a line or something about still getting looks sometimes. That’s always been something I found unrealistic somber movies.

Nice touch earlier showing Natalie Portman mirroring Moore. This scene where she’s dry humping the air in the stock room seems over the top. But I just heard Margo Robbie in an interview with Cillian Murphy talk about her animal work for BARBIE. And she said something like no matter how much she pretended to be a flamingo she couldn’t find the character. So I’m buying that actors are weirder than I would give them credit for.

They still do it too much. But the movie actor researching a role is a great way to create the vignettes with each character.

I wonder if they’re going to explore anymore that Portman’s answer about the sex scenes was obviously sensual in front of these teens.

Oh yeah, that lawyer was played exceptionally well. Disarming at first with the compliment. And seemingly almost non-judgemental at first. But then clearly judgemental. Just a sophisticated man talking about his ex-client. And it was on the page. But the lines were perfectly delivered. Also, in general just really great dialog.

Oh, and the nod to all the stuff that we’re not seeing was appreciated. This is a very contained view. I’ll be far less miffed now if they don’t actually depict it.

I never realized how intimate women putting make up on each other is. Like obviously they’re playing it up for dramatic tension. But even in cultures where homosexuality is so prohibited that men can hold hands in public and no one thinks there’s a possibility of a sexual relationship there’s nothing close to this.

The scene with the acting class is making the butterfly scene a bit more confusing. Like he’s obviously emotionally stunted. And they did a good job showing her flirting in the doctor’s office to put him on his back foot and open up. But then her mildly throwing it at the class makes this scene where he’s like a kid telling a pretty girl about his hobbies… IDK I don’t think Portman’s supposed to be genuinely into him obviously. But I’m just not sure how the acting class contributes to what’s obviously a sensual vibe here.

No scene lasts a second too long or a second too short. They all end very intentionally jarringly. Constantly keeps you off balance in a great way that really mimics how Portman is feeling in these conversations.

Julianne Moore is really giving a tour de force performance. Subtle and loud in all the right places. Portman too. But as the tour guide character there’s not as much there. As obviously there shouldn’t be. We’re not watching a movie about how an actress creates a performance.

Speaking of which the movie making aspect, that Moore is putting on performance for Portman, actually brings a lightness in what could be Lifetime fare. Which they can just dip into. The alternative is a movie of 90% domestic mundaneness with highly dramatic scenes interspersed.

OK, they’re doing a parallel between Portman and Moore’s character. Which seems a bit out of place in this story. Like they felt they had to. But seems a little writerly. Definitely not hiding the hand of the artist.

Oh, with the dress I get it now. It’s more kinda flamingo acting stuff. She’s doing an acting version of SINGLE WHITE FEMALE.

Jesus, that “It’s all I do” line hit hard.

I’m fully expecting him to make a move. But I’m going to be disappointed if she hooks up with Joe.

A little Lifetime. But it needed a dramatic climax. I think the kids would have been a better choice.

OK, still a little Lifetime but the character payoff is worth that tradeoff.

A little weird since Portman doesn’t give off that femme fatale vibe. Like I could see Angelina Jolie seducing him for the role and giving the “that’s what grownups do” line and me just buying it.

Hmm, I thought 7th grade was 11

Their last exchange was way too much. Especially since they had the very on the nose ending with the snake. Still. One miss in an otherwise great movie.

POST: The cheesiness of what the actual movie turned out to be I think was there to show just how much her entire visit was a waste of everyone’s time and just a cruel violation. I guess it has to be because all of her actions, and presence to begin with is so psychotic.

The Popehat Report

Stop Demanding Dumb Answers To Hard Questions

This post may be less solicitous of your feelings than you may hope. America faces many problems. The easy ones we solve or ignore. We struggle with the hard ones. Hard problems raise complex questions that lack glib, one-word answers. The stubborn thirst for simple answers to hard questions is bad for America. It’s anti-intellectual, pro-ignorance…

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2 years ago · 330 likes · 279 comments · Ken White

This piece ignores all context of why they were there in the first place. That the activities of the past weeks have been entirely inconsistent with past actions regarding speech. And despite what the official policy is that these universities have been anything but free speech absolutists for well over a decade now.

Or even liberal norms in general. Where has this commitment been to liberal norms been to the student subject to Kafkaesque Title IX trials? Denied even the basics of defense. Only to discover the value of liberal norms now.

This piece mistakes that people are calling for the firing because they were bamboozled by verbal trickery. No, they are calling for firings because of the obvious hypocrisy. A better answer that would not have had this backlash, "Possibly, depending on context." Because it signals consistency. That they could apply the same censorious rules they've been using with the same lip service disclaimers to free speech they keep in the official policies.

The first and most important rule for free speech absolutism is that free speech rules are applied equally. If you don't have that as a base then it makes thinking around speech a zero-sum game. Why would anyone endorse a value that they believe will only be used against them? And you certainly can't just suddenly rediscover that value when the subject is the genocide of the wrong group of people. When everyone knows there are groups of people they would have no hesitancy in speaking very clearly about. Popehat rightly says the questions are hard. But for some groups the answers are simple. And for some the answers are hard. And the groups for whom they are hard are rightly distrustful of that.

The next type of girl is the femme tomboy who is either very virginal like Alyson Hannigan, Alyson Hannigan’s blonde girlfriend, the mechanic in FIREFLY, or the blonde sidekick to the main character in NEVERS. Or a dark haired tomboy who is aggressively sexual. Like the main character in DOLLHOUSE, that same actress when she played the other slayer who kept saying 5 by 5, the whore on FIREFLY. And I’ve yet to see her on NEVERS but I’m betting one of the characters will be this.

Oh and Charisma Carpenter is notably none of these. But it’s worth noting that she didn’t start out a main character on BUFFY. But was a relatively minor foil whose role expanded. And was deemed expendable enough that she could be safely shipped off to the ANGEL spinoff without a loss to the main show.

Main character guys come in two flavors as well. Nerdy guy who’s both bad with women but also gets a girl. Not the main girl. But a side girl. Xander, Wesley, the pilot from FIREFLY, the dark haired guy from NEVERS. And roguish villain who may or may not have a flirtation with the main girl. Which you see in DOLLHOUSE and Alan something who was the pilot in FIREFLY, obviously Spike, somewhat in Angel but he was a more brooding version until Whedon landed on the Spike template, and the bisexual aristocrat who is running the sex club and is almost certainly going to be the villain.

It’s a shame NEVERS is so bad because it’s kinda interesting to see Joss Whedon doing a soft R

It does have the feeling of a WB superhero show (I’ve seen clips). Whedon spent too much time in network.

I’ve never understood shows including unsexy nudity. You avoid the vocal offense. But not the drop in prudish viewers. But none of the upside of drawing prurient interest. The vocal offense is just sound and fury signifying nothing. So what if 100 blog writers pretend to be offended? People will talk. No one will care. People hated GAME OF THRONES when it was poorly written. Not when people were talking about sexposition. That was the show's height.

I feel like Joss Whedon should never write female protagonists again. It seems like he’s said everything he has to say with them. Making 2D male protagonists interesting seems to be a new field for him (Captain America, Superman).

NEVERS is like if an AI was tasked with writing a Joss Whedon show. It reminds me a bit of when Clive Owen(?) was doing THE KNICK and said he was worried about doing a series because people will pick up on your tricks if they see you do your thing every week. This feels like Joss Whedon giving away his tricks. Or maybe I should say “turns”. Which you wont get because no one watched this show.

Between NEVERS anti-union good guy and the libertarian themes in FIREFLY I’m feeling more confident that Joss Whedon is a closet libertarian.

Oh, I didn’t comment on the deus ex machina exposition hooker. But obviously I noticed she was a deus ex machina exposition machine.

I mean the ripoff of THE UMBRELLA ACADEMY origin story is already blatant enough. But the gay detective storyline is just so forced. Like everyone starts out with all these interconnected storylines. Like a good show you start out and have a period where the characters meet. They you have a period where the audience knows the characters. Then a period where you’re building off the backstory. And that’s 5 - 10 seasons. But starting with an interconnected backstory involves is like starting off in the 9th inning.

Two episodes and I’m throwing in the towel. Never watch THE NEVERS… I’m sorry saying that.

The key to good sitcoms is that the writers are critical of the main characters of the sitcoms. (Archie Bunker’s a racist, Meathead is a loser, Chandler’s a loser and unmasculine, Joey’s retarded, Rachel is vain and spoiled, Monica’s competitive and and obsessive, Phoebe’s a hippie, Ross is insensitive and obsessive, Balki Bartokomous is a dimwit, Cousin Larry’s a bully and overconfident, Peg Bundy’s a sponge, Kelly’s an idiot and a slut, Bud is a loser, and Al Bundy has too many faults to count many to count) The shows mock these characters’ failings as people. And they're the butt of the jokes. Then at the last second the show does a deus ex reversal so that it's all ok so as not to bum people and keep it light. This is the fundamental concept of situational comedy. The characters are unlikeable. The comedy makes you like them anyway.

SEINFELD and CURB are the only two prominent examples I can think of which don't have the deus ex happy ending reversal. It's because they're both also comedies of manners. So there's very few stakes. It’s not like MODERN FAMILY where if the problem isn’t revealed at the end as a mere misunderstanding a family is facing divorce.1

CURB YOUR ENTHUSIASM is unique because Larry David is the sitcom equivalent of Jesus. In most sitcoms their gods mock them from the characters from afar. Punishing them for their limitations through situations that they never permanently learn their lessons from.2 But Larry David wrote himself into his own show to criticize his own creations to their faces. Much like G-d did when, as Jesus, He came to Earth to tell us what he didn’t like about us and how we should change.

Which brings us to modern sitcoms with likable characters. Like everyone else in the world I haven’t seen much of them. But the thing they all lack is a dislike for the main characters. Their problems are not themselves but external evils. And they teach “lessons”. These have always existed. And have never been very good. Everything from THE BRADY BUNCH to the TGIF lineup. Now at best there’s a dumb dad who aggravates the mom. In a reversal of the 1950’s - 70s sitcoms where a wise husband was dealing with the tribulations caused by his wife. The best of these being I LOVE LUCY and BEWITCHED. Because Ricky didn’t exactly have flaws (well, for the time the accent). But him and Fred also were occasionally the butt of the joke. And the problems Samantha caused Darren were often slapstick caused by her magic. Rather than her being incompetent. If anything she was too competent. But they both wanted to live a normal life. Although for those who do want to get offended sometimes his bitch mother in law would drop in make him miserable for an episode.

There are a couple of modern popular sitcoms. THE BIG BANG THEORY still got something in the range of pre-streaming sitcom viewers. But it was similarly mean, mostly to White Steve Urkel.

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PS - A special note should be made for THE SIMPSONS. Where Homer is truly one of the worst men in the first 6 seasons. During which time he’s not an idiot. I mean he’s dumb. But not the cartoonishly dumb character he becomes. As the show goes on Homer’s selfish cruelty has to be explained. And the show morphs him into a character that’s less of a man and almost a force of nature. A kind of Mr. Magoo level of stupidity where his level of stupidity makes his behavior forgivable because you can’t reasonably expect more consideration from him than you would a chimp in a zoo. And it is in this state of innocence that the show begins to lose any relevance to real life. And Homer blindly walks Magoo-like into space, I think he runs a farm. And the change the show undergoes3 starting, I believe, in season 7. Homer provides an amusing response to the Bush I criticism of the belief in the corrupting affects of art however. Since Homer being a cause of corruption rather than a reactionary response to it is demonstrated by the fact that the biggest fans of the show are simply the softest boys. The show succeeded in creating an image of selfishness that young men watched as only existing ironically. The casual, near sociopathic, disregard for even a superficial consideration as something they would never do. Although, that too probably has more to do with their nature and the lack of abuse they endured rather than the effects of the show. Which likely reinforces, at best, or acts as a mere signal/ indicator of personality at worst.

Which is why no one watched “Andor” when it came out. But I keep seeing it on trending now due to a slow build of fans evidently going to war with the fans of the new Disney+ series “Ashoka”(?). Which evidently the defense of it seems to be that they don't care that it's bad?

But this is all to say that bundles will probably allow people with taste to sneak through well made shows and movies. That would otherwise be not made it they were judged by an algorithm whose suggestions are based on internet chatter.

The slow failure of Identitarianism proves the academy is good. AND was right to explore the idea. It was a new idea. And did have valuable elements.

For example microaggressions were a concept I found the most complicated. Because they were real. I worked for NY Life for a minute and brought a friend and colleague, she was far more progressive than me, along with me to try to sell an Asian-American couple life insurance. And her first statement was something like “I don’t know if your culture mourns death”. I forget the exact wording but I was cringing about the idea that maybe some people aren’t sad about dead relatives. And also they were born and raised in New Jersey. This is their culture. She had gone so far into sensitivity to race that she found herself being a little racist. But the point is microaggressions do exist. And should be called out. The problem is the manichean way they were presented as. You can let it go (like the couple did, but also they went with a different company)1. Or you can throw a little etiquette and civility on it and preface your statement with “I know you didn’t mean anything. But it’s weird to ask if we’re sad if Asians are sad when our families die.”2 And I’ve seen this kind of thing many times. It’s just better when it happens in childhood.

The point being I get why this kind of granular examination of racism was a valid experiment for the academy. But sunlight is the best disinfectant. And it’s slowly dying as it’s both not helping anyone and also making people miserable. And the next problem is the alt-right vibes-Right3 have started learning the progressive tactics and using them on much more fertile ground.

But that’s what the Ivory Tower is for. To experiment with bold ideas. And reject the ones that fail. Many people were Chicken Littles saying the sky is falling. But it just needed for these ideas, once they were fully developed, to be released to the normies and for the normies to all scream “NO!” And now they’re being slowly retired.

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I lean libertarian but also think a some is pretty nutty. But the moment when my mind changed is when I left China and went back to college in Madrid. But I didn’t know Americans needed a visa for Europe, that was only true for tourism. So when I went to the college library they told me I needed a school ID. So I went to get a school ID. And the lady at the office asked me for my visa. And I was worried I was getting kicked out of the country and getting kicked out of school. And then the supervisor walked over. The lady explained the situation. And he said “Just print the ID”. And after that I lived in Spain for 2 years and never had a problem. My ex, similar situation, except she just took out an ad in the newspaper to teach English and supported herself that way. And it’s like yeah libertarians are kinda nutty. But also the government is kinda nutty. And most things are just ok to let people handle at the most local level. And it only gets weird at the extremes.

This is a comment The Fifth Column podcast’s ep on Eric Adams immigration speech and the lack of infrastructure to handle the immigration crisis while also having right to house laws and wanting a tourist industry. And it’s like you can be pro-immigration but that means you have to be radically YIMBY. Or you can be NIMBY but then be radically ant-immigration (including within America, NYC needs to by YIMBY to absorb immigrants from other American states). But what you can’t be is a progressive who’s both NIMBY and pro-immigration.

For the obvious observation that Spain is very restrictive about protecting buildings that are almost comically classified as historical. At least in the mid 2000’s Spain wasn’t faced with an immigration crisis from the USA. And I had the privilege to live there unlawfully. Even back then it was probably harder to do that from other places.

Because for comedy nerds Shane was the new hotness for a while. But a lot of people think getting cancelled put him over the top. (and ftr "the top" is still new media top. most people have never heard of him. it's not like old media Richard Pryor or Jerry Seinfeld where you know a decent amount about their careers even if you never saw anything they did). But what put Shane over the top wasn't getting cancelled. There are lots of new media people who have been cancelled that you never heard of. It was that he was associated with old media SNL. Like ofc SNL isn't as relevant as it used to be. And lots of the marginally talented people on the show never go anywhere. But it is one of the last old media relics. And either way could have gone the David Spade or Pete Davidson route and gotten famous from Weekend Update bits. Or what happened and he got cancelled and became a standup powerhouse. But it was the old media connection that changed a cancelling to an opportunity. Final caveat is the last old media holdout is music. Because while the tech has changed the biz model has actually stayed the same. Musicians never made money from radio or music videos That was always just advertisement for their live appearances. In a way Youtube specials gave comedy the ability to replicate the biz model that has worked for music since the invention of radio.

Barbie movie is, thus far, so well executed. My personal enjoyment of it is like a 7/10. But objectively it's walking such a tightrope. Once wrong step and the whole thing comes crashing down. And it hasn't made a misstep once. Also, Will Ferrel is perfect as Mattel Willy Wonka

As far as the conservative backlash the sense I'm getting is "How mad are you at feminism?" If the answer is "Unreasonably" then ofc you're gonna have a bad time. And I don't blame them. In a sense. I don't blame them in the scorpion and the frog way. Like it's to be expected.

To put it another way, it's kabuki. Like the role the Barbie movie will play is to do Teen Vogue feminism. The role for reactionary anti-feminist conservatives is to get mad at that. Everyone is just playing their roles and reading the rote scripts they can't not say.

For my own butt hurt reactionary take for as anti-corporate this movie is I do enjoy thinking about how hypocritically Greta Gerwig is loving the (deserved) financial success of the movie.

Actually wasn’t going to do one of these since I don’t really have that much to say about the movie. But I paused to cook a little. And am just jotting down what’s going through my head until my chicken is done.

As far as the “deserved” from before I do feel like pre-2005(?) this movie would merely be a quite good movie. On the level of MEAN GIRLS. But in the movie desert that is the new snoring ‘20s (see what I did there?) it’s elevated to great by way of terrible comparison.

Oh, I read once that despite the animosity to spoilers people typically enjoy fiction more when it’s been spoiled. And there are movies I stopped watching but enjoyed on the 2nd viewing when I knew what to expect. And actually a lot of the Barbie movie was in fact spoiled for me. And I think the Ken stuff might have been helped by that.

OK, Ken’s 2nd act turn reminds me very much of the end of Kevin Smith’s mediocre DOGMA when Ben Affleck is dropping the bodies and says something along the lines of “[G-d] should have just let us fuck”. There’s a dorm room level analysis of patriarchy/ men that both movies share. The difference though is that BARBIE is a movie for kids. And DOGMA was Smith’s opus on religion.

But there is a galaxy brain interpretation about how Ken, even without genitals, is still a sexual animal. While Barbie is possibly the most frigid1. Which makes sense cause you can’t make a horny Barbie movie. But, and I can’t quite put my finger on this (and the movie isn’t over), but it does feel like the movie is expressing feminism doesn’t quite know what it wants to be. Like it recognizes and represents a kind of stereotypical trad instinct. Ken, a loser, comes back with a book on the patriarchy and the Barbies `happily` are bringing them beers. But it doesn’t like that either. Until one by one a woman convinces them they’re actually unhappy.

FTR my position is that the Barbies being scientists while liking the alpha Kens are not actually in conflict. There’s only tension if you insist upon a maximalist position on gender roles. It’s a kids’ movie so it’s ok. But it’s childish to not get that power dynamics in relationships have nuance.

“You have to…” Or else what? Like why do you “have to?” There’s something super trad about Barbie feminism. Like by focusing on stereotypes there’s kinda a thing where these contradictions exist in the minds of the Barbies and only there. Like all the contradictions go away if you just accept that people have preferences and you can’t please everyone. So make a choice who you want to be and be ok with the idea that that means some people will like you less.

I’m pretty sure given Gerwig’s encyclopedic knowledge of movies she thinks THE GODFATHER is in fact a masterpiece. But somehow it’s also sexist to extoll its virtues. Also there’s a pretense here that women are pretending not to know stuff. But implicit in that is that if they didn’t know these things it would in fact be shameful to require help with. Which kinda suggests all the subjects (like basic finance) the Barbies are pretending not to know are just things the movie is saying real women stereotypically don’t actually know. But it reimagines the real life ignorance as a feint.

I feel like it says something that the show stopping number at the end is done by the dudes and is about the Barbies in a background guiding role. Reminds me of this Armenian expression this girl once told me “In a marriage the man is the head. But the wife is the neck.” The whole movie is the kind of Teen Vogue feminism that pays lip service to the girl boss. But kinda pays homage to being very trad.

I mean the end of the Barbie movie is that she finally gets a vagina so, presumably, is no long frigid? Man, Ken really could have avoided a whole character arc if Barbie did that at the beginning of the movie.2 Like the plot of the movie is Ken is frustrated because he’s in a lifelong relationship (essentially a marriage before no-fault divorce) with a frigid woman. And the end of the movie is Barbie is told, Dorothy-like, she always had the power to become human. But goes through the process to find fulfillment by putting in the final piece of the puzzle and growing a vagina. Thus becoming a sexual being. Freud would love this. Lip service feminism while being trad as fuck. Like in the scene with the construction workers where she states that neither she nor Ken have genitals I thought it would be funny if the end of the movie was Barbie getting a twat. But didn’t think it was worth mentioning. But that is the end of the movie.

I mean the movie is superficially life affirming. But the plot is that Barbie is completely satisfied. She rejects and hates that suddenly she’s ripped from the Matrix. Goes on a hero’s journey to restore her reality. Learns that her bad thoughts happened because her brain has been scrambled by a girl so famously cruel and domineering that _when an adult approaches her_ another girl steps in the way to tell her how abusive this child is. Only to find out that in fact it was the mother who has been so beaten down by this hell spawn that she’s been thinking about death through the avatar of a children’s toy. And for some reason Barbie chooses this hell rather than returning to a life she loved for almost a century. And Ken does FLOWERS FOR ALGERNON. Except when he returns to his 2nd class citizenship he still remembers the brief time where both Kens and Barbies were happy together under the patriarchy. Until feminism reinstated their matriarchal prison.3

POSTSCRIPT: The Barbie victory is secured by each Barbie intentionally making her Ken jealous so he fights over her. That’s not me twisting anything. That’s the tentpole of their plan. A more trad plot point could not have been written.

POST POSTSCRIPT: It’s crazy that the BARBIE movie has the most sympathetic and hot incel in cinematic history. In internet terms they made the Chads incel Kens. And they made Michel Cera’s natural incel, Allan, a content Last Man. It’s actually pretty wild.

POST POST POSTSCRIPT: The Barbies are deprogrammed by a women so unhappy in her own life that she psychically broke Stereotypical Barbie from a different dimension.

POST POST POST POST POSTSCRIPT: When looking at the equality of Barbieland it’s notable that there is no money. Their jobs are entirely about differentiating status, as kids role playing games are. But the movie’s perspective is that the patriarchy created role playing games that were fun for all.

2

Either accepted or rejected rather than trapped in the role of sexless boyfriend purgatory with a woman who has no libido. It would be more obviously sexist if the idea of frigid women wasn’t so antiquated (although weirdly reclaimed as asexual) that it has been forgotten about. Like it’s so out of the discourse it’s mostly only talked about academically

Hollywood was never as original as it thought it was. A significant amount of hits were based on books or plays. And those got changed drastically. It's just that books and plays were less popular. So it was only the book readers who complained when characters were changed. And movies were new. So there wasn't a history of old movie IP with the kind of mass market appeal to remake.

So then the franchises that did exist were based on the cast of actors who since they were physical people couldn't be swapped. There were twenty-eight BLONDIE (from the comic strip) movies. Six THIN MAN movies. Or acting couples, Bogie & Bacall, Hepburn & Tracy, Astaire & Rogers, Hudson & Day. A lot of these franchise movies made were under the studio system where the studios owned the actors' contracts.

And the move away from these franchise changed when the Studio System collapsed. And actors became freelance players. And we got virtual franchises with the locus on the actor. So even if an action movie was not part of a franchise you knew what a Bruce Willis action movie was vs what an Arnold movie was. But instead the virtual franchises shared a flavor rather than the formulas like under the Studio System. But like the cast based franchises you can't race (or otherwise) swap.

Except for James Bond...

So eventually the studios found themselves with a back catalog of former blockbusters (or virtual blockbusters in terms of familiarity thanks to tv and video). And a situation akin to the Studio System. But this time instead of owning the actors they owned the characters. And the characters had enough cultural familiarity built up to carry the franchise with a different actor in the role. But unlike adapting books and plays where only the relatively small number of people were familiar with the source material to complain. Now everyone had seen (or were familiar with) the source material.1

Which had previously only existed for James Bond. And every new Bond carried with it a large fan controversy which spanned decades. So adapting old works and trying to make franchises isn't new. And how they manifest is mostly about how the studios own capital (contracts vs IP). And drastically changing characters in adaptations isn't some new woke conspiracy. Although the trend towards diversity is likely a mix of trying to tap into expanding markets as well as woke pressure. Similarly, fans getting mad about character changes has always existed. Although, race/ gender swapping is particularly jarring2 and carries a host of other political weight.

Part of the end result of this is that actors no longer have the clout to deliver movies on their own. Which limits their ability to make indie movies low key hits on the strength of their reputations (in addition to issues with streaming).

“This is so meta and gay” I thought before Ed Norton and Jason Schwartzman kissed on the lips. With no warning except for how their monotone delivery devoid of any emotion made me think “This is really gay, they should kiss”

We should normalize whiteface. Cause I get the desire to hire the best actor for the role. And to hire actors of color. But it’s often confusing to wonder if the actor is playing a role written for a white guy. Or if the movie lives in a universe where there' wasn’t racism in the 1950s.

The acting in this movie is distilled autism. Any emotion in any performance has been ruthlessly excluded. The DeNiro-esque fear of over acting leading to little more than rote recitations of lines is fully realized in this movie. Sad to see this dog shit being put out by Wes Anderson in an age where the only original projects being made require a big name behind them. And this is what we get.

This feel like if someone gave an AI a prompt to write a movie in the style of Wes Anderson. Rather than being a Wes Anderson movie

Adrien Brody has expressed the movie’s first emotion. It’s not much, but it’s at least recognizably human.

I get the sense that it’s so deeply personal that parts of it abandoned all artifice. But also parts heightened the artifice into the realm of pointlessness. Like I have the feeling that the Adrien Brody scene is a distillation of something that happened. But the instinct to make it into a self consciously “Wes Anderson” style resulted in a dry and monotone performance.

The movie almost more aspires to autism as a romanticized idea than is actually about it. Like it views itself as if everyone were Spock. When in fact Wes Anderson movies have always been about raging emotion hidden behind formality. Not dryness.

Don’t cast a kid so aggressively Jewish as an Episcopalian.

The sexual tension between Maya Hawke and cowboy guy is palpable. They just danced. But given this movie’s indulgence in subtext it wouldn’t be crazy for him to take her on the table in front of the children. Like I don’t expect it. But I bet there was a draft of the script with that in it.

Pretty obvious that the Jew playing the Episcopalian kid was about to make out with that actress who looks weird and kinda sexless.

I hate this movie. Is that Margo Robbie? It’d make sense in her theme of only making terrible movies.

Opening in Knowhere. I know they’re introducing Adam Warlock in this one. And while I don’t know too much about him I know he’s tied to the Silver Surfer often. And I thought when they introduce the Silver Surfer it shouldn’t be in a Fantastic Four movie. It should be in a stand alone movie about the Silver Surfer’s origin featuring Adam Warlock. And end bittersweet with the Silver Surfer agreeing to be Galactus’ herald to save his planet. And introduce the Fantastic Four in their own movies. With Galactus reaching Earth as the major climax of that phase.

I rarely say this about people. But Adam Warlock has kinda a punchable face. Like the kinda guy who’s both overly nice. But also kinda a jerk if you’re not in his circle.

Karen Gillan’s sort of angel wings cannon arm thing is kinda hot for some reason.

Drax is kinda dead weight on the team. Like I haven’t seen him be stronger than a single supervillain. Never really a decisive part of a single fight in any of the movies.

Little interesting that both the big new MCU villains are Black. Like on the one hand I’m glad to see they’re not denying Black actors work by being afraid to cast them as flawed characters (which needless to say are the most interesting characters, good villains drive stories). But just interesting.

This stuff about the Grandpa is being introduced in a pretty ham fisted manner. Like the fight about it and Quill’s resistance seems so artificial. Like drama for drama’s sake. Like they can’t just have a slow moment. That was one thing Joss Whedon did very well. He knew how to change pacing to make moments land.

Portal wizards are now officially overused. If you can just portal people from and to anywhere it kills the stakes. You have to have very strict limits on your deus ex machina devices or they’ll build up and destroy any possibility for a narrative.

Since Stallone just made the same get the animal wrong joke it made me realize how did Warlock know what a squirrel was to mistake Rocket for one?

Soundtrack really fits the visuals well

Gotta say I know they’re the comic relief pair. But Mantis and Drax are the biggest screwups. Not sure I’d send them off on their own to complete a mission.

So far liking the movie. I know there was a split over loving and hating it. It’s definitely way darker that the first two. But nothing that should be too much for a kid over 10.

So far they’re really making the cute animal friends overly sweet. The torture porn is coming.

Why make it a competition with “this is worse than what Thanos did to me”? I mean I guess I can see it. Presumably Nebula’s additions were surgical and designed to avoid torturing her.

The High Evolutionary stumbling in drunk is a return to a theme consistent through most of Gunn’s work. Abusive dads. Sometimes they’re sympathetic like Yandu. Sometimes totally evil like the Nazi dad in the John Cena show. But it’s a well he keeps coming back to. I don’t know how he’ll play this out here. But I was afraid the thing that made some people hate the movie was just going to be edgelord bullshit. But I think there’s potential now for him to actually have something to say with the character. And the people who don’t get it probably live lives very far away from actually difficult home lives.

So far I like it. But it’s hard to imagine what they’re going to do with a whole other hour of movie left.

Finally Drax made himself not totally useless. But after making things so much worse by abandoning his post. Still in the negative column.

“What kind of monster slaughters a civilization?” Your dad, bitch. Like you should be used to this. This is what you were raised on. Maybe “Even my father left planets half alive.”

Hey, Nebula just called out Drax’s uselessness. Good for James Gunn.

Otter girl is coming through the light. We still haven’t seen her. I’m going to guess Gunn is an atheist and she’s going to have robot arms because this is just a dream.

Ya know, since they brought up how dumb the jumping out of the ship plan was a better art design could have made a better wooden glider.

Also, I guess it’s better for the comic relief (although Drax is a bit one note, and I’m kinda over it) but I’m not sure I like that Mantis made him forget that she thinks he’s stupid.

I will say given how the character is written douchy Adam Warlock was in fact cast very well.

Well written Mantis “redemption”. But I don’t like the idea of empaths being portrayed as anything but annoying hypocrites. But it works in the movie.

I wasn’t really that thrilled with Vol 2. This movie is very much a redemption of it.

I would have respected Gunn so much if he let the High Evolutionary get killed by mutiny. Then the Guardians don’t really know what to do with the space eugenicists. So they just let them go. Live to be villains in another movie. But the good guy has to kill the big bad. Still, he could have had them take the shot but the energy beams are like calibrated not to affect his suit or something. Doesn’t make sense for them to not shoot when he has that energy suit.

Second “Reservoir Dogs” walk? This one is way more earned. I would have cut the first one.

Every time Adam Warlock wakes up he tries to kill everyone. Like besides needing him alive for future movies why would they save him and not one of the other minions? Like if nothing else but for the sake of the children who he will most likely kill if we didn’t know that he’s going to be a good guy in later movies.

If intentional nice touch making him look like the Red Skull.

Nice touch making the monkey claw the lady’s face. The hippy version is saving the animals is easy. But this is going to be soooooo difficult.

Maybe the medic bay before the group hug?

Uh, calling Rocket captain doesn’t actually mean you’re not abandoning him. Quill could just be like “I’ll be back. But I want to spend whatever years my grandfather has getting to know him.” So it’s not goodbye, just “Hasta luego”.

Glad to see the post-credits scene undercut the possibility of promoting a dangerous message of vegetarianism.

Good movie. Best of the three. Best Marvel movie since Endgame by a long shot. I wasn’t expecting much after the kinda blah 2nd movie. But really did a good job with the themes Gunn has been playing with throughout his career in a very silly comic book movie set in space.

Also it starts out and I already have a sense of the thrust of the movie. Like the character development is revealed in scenes moving the plot along. It’s still early. But in contrast to AIR I felt like it established the characters early. But they were pretty two dimensional. And in lieu of character it was filled with the aforementioned speeches. Which were just telling the audience how important these shoes were going to be.

Not the most original. But they have a more annoying nerd to make the main nerd more likable. But no need to reinvent the wheel. It doesn’t have to be Shakespeare to be a good afternoon movie.

One of the background guys is playing Civ 2. Bonus points.

Dennis Reynolds is more interesting and dynamic than the entire cast of AIR. Yes, I realize I’m talking about AIR a lot. But as many people have said they’re part of this class of nostalgia movies about businesses making stuff. So I feel like they are both most interesting in contrast to each other.

Annoying nerd is breaking out of the mold a little. Yes, he’s making Mike (I only know his name because Dennis screams it at the top of his lungs every 5 minutes) more likable. But he’s also serving as the spokesman for Mike’s repressed id.

Pitch meeting scene. I’m so uncomfortable it’s palpable… It’s well acted that the thing that had to happen happened. But it still could maintain tension.

Interesting seeing the anti-Chinese manufacturing angle. Much more relevant today than it was even a couple of years ago. Makes me wonder when the script was written.

Glenn Howerton is really killing it playing the least Canadian Canadian.

Another advantage of BLACKBERRY over AIR is that we don’t know if Howerton is going to screw Mike. There have been hints. Like Mike saying “Let’s agree never to lie to each other” just screams Chekov’s gun. But the Palm Pilot people could be the bad guys. AIR had no real suspense. It was too much of a commercial for Nike to create any real stakes by making a Nike member unlikeable. And you know Nike becomes the king of shoes. In BLACKBERRY the only character you can fully trust is Mike… or can we?

Little annoying the loss of innocence sad music? Is it just conveying the emotion? Or a signal that Mike is taking a wrong direction. When clearly the company is in a fight for its life. It’s a problem with movies today. In the past there was more of a sense that movies were written by adults. Like comedies would turn things topsy turvy and make it so the knuckleheads were actually right all along (woo hoo, party time). But dramas had a sense of realism. But now you never know if a drama is going to write its rules of poetic justice that really not letting everyone become self actualized or whatever is a bad thing. And you can be successful and be as quirky as you like.

Also in comparison to the China politics in the how stuff aged from a year ago the mass layoffs in tech and the retiring of the “bring your whole self to work” ethos that changed just a few months ago.

So, I was proven wrong. But I’m not loving petulant Mike (“I invented this!”). Like I think it would be more emotional to watch him not take the issue seriously than undercut the mistake by making him spoiled and bratty.

These schedules are kinda silly. Everything is happening in the course of a day. Jim (Howerton) can’t be reached and has just checked out. Now they have to build a phone in a week or lose Verizon. All very dumb.

Oh, gotta say been thinking this all movie. They really could have spent more on the wig budget.

They don’t have lawyers there who would stop their client from talking to the Feds?

Little sloppy for the ending. But overall good movie for what it is.