For the unversed, Anya Taylor-Joy is said to step into the character Furiosa’s shoes as part of the franchise’s latest instalment.
Wait, what? They’re going to do a movie with an older Max and a younger Furiosa? That’s bullshit.
I’d be happy to see Tom Hardy coming back for this, but if Furiosa plays an important role, I’d rather see Theron back, honestly.
I want him to do Season 2 of Taboo!
Yeah, that’d be cool.
Watched the first two episodes yesterday, will watch the third one tonight.
It’s good to be back in this world. Loved the rivalling rebel group idiots, and the TIE fighter sequence, and the other arcs are building nicely. Also, that rapey Imperial officer was creepy as fuck.
Your local gun club?
Well, that’d be one way to go. I was thinking more along the line of NGOs like Transparency International or one of the ones fighting against climate change. Or local charities, or antifa chapters.
Probably the most fired-up I’ve ever seen Al Gore:
And yes they covered up Biden’s cognitive decline. As well as they could anyway.
If by “they” you mean the White House, of course they did, or tried to. And you linked to an article where journalists are self-questioning whether they fought hard enough to nevertheless draw this into the spotlight, because of course they reported on it. Look at your original post and at what you claimed happened if apparently anyone dared mention his mental state. And did the media let the White House get away with too much in trying to cover up his problems? Maybe. But all of this is still a pretty normal process; hell, it’d happened before with Reagan and to a much greater extent. The point is that during all this, the Biden admin was still doing normal, and often actually pretty good government work and you called that a worse shitshow than Trump right now, which is just as insane as it gets.
Dude, Western countries are completely dysfunctional.
And this is a completely different point and I agree with it to an extent – though obviously not entirely, just go to one of the failed states in the world and try to build a life there if you want to know what completely dysfunctional means. But there are a lot of problems that are not being addressed, and this has led to the current state of things in which too many people are opting out of democracy and becoming fascism curious. But there are also a lot of people working on actually making things better and finding a way to switch tracks. There are many, many productive groups you can support if you’re so desparate about the state of affairs instead of just spiralling over extremist news you algorithm feeds you.
Erdo would be bad, he’s friendly with Orban and by extension probably Putin.
Yikes. Zuppi, on the other hand, sounds good – he was a close advisor of Francis’ and seems to share his more liberal views, as well as a focus on relieving poverty.
Also, I like his smirk that he has in almost all photos of him.
https://www.omnesmag.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/mateo-zuppi.jpg
I listened to a podcast a while ago with Rob van Wijk, an academic who works for the strategic think tank Clingendael Institute, and he mentioned how the Vatican is a powerful force in international diplomacy. He thinks they have one of the best information networks in the world because they’re literally everywhere.
Interesting! And yeah, that makes a lot of sense.
I haven’t played the game and thus don’t know the story, but I expect when the unavoidable doom comes, they will come together again.
Uh, spoilers for ep 2 of The Last of Us.
Well, for two seconds or so at least.
Shit obviously went down faster than I expected here. But for what it’s worth, and again not knowing the games, I thought this was incredibly exciting TV. Can’t wait for the next episode.
(Oh, and I am glad Joel’s brother and his wife survived. Wouldn’t have been surprised if everybody except for Ellie had just fucking died this episode. Jesus Christ.)
I bet it’s another Pope
How awesome would it be if it was a capybayra instead?
More seriously, it’s a really big question. It does make a big difference to the world whether the Pope is a more progressive or regressive figure, and it’ll be interesting to see who comes out on top this time.
Honestly the Biden administration would be just as funny, or even funnier. Dems let a senile man lead the world.
And yet under his lead, there was a competent administration quietly doing pretty good work like investing in the US infrastructure, lowering the cost of insuline, advancing regenerative energies and supporting labour unions. And they did all this without leaking shit about Biden’s health to the press.
That’s not Ianucci material, that’d be Sorkin. If you can’t see how fucking hilarious a Ianucci depiction of the continuous meltdowns and backstabbing and insanity of Trumpworld would be, well, I recommend watching Veep. Because I am doing that right now and it’s like two sides of one coin.
I mean, you should always stand with Satan.
(It’s the same raid, but it turns out Pete Hegseth talked about it in a general Signal chat including his wife and brother-in-law)
A series of leaks about military planning for the Panama Canal and the Middle East, about a possible consolidation of the combatant commands, and about a classified China briefing for Elon Musk at the Pentagon had deeply rattled Hegseth by mid-March, sources told CNN. So he and Kasper launched a leak probe, complete with polygraph tests.
Following the press reports — including one in The New York Times about the questionable success of a massive military campaign against the Houthis — Hegseth began to lash out and grew suspicious that senior military officials, as well as some of his closest advisers, were leaking to undermine him, the sources added.
https://edition.cnn.com/2025/04/20/politics/hegseth-second-signal-chat-military-plans/index.html
Man, to be a fly on that wall.
I’m kinda hoping that one day, Armando Iannucci will write a Death-of-Stalin style movie about the Trump administration.
Sure does. I’ll add the Filoni-verse connections to Clone Wars etc. All of that just weighed down the show and wiped out what was originally cool about it (a lone bounty-hunter charged with a special kid, encountering new adventures every episode).
“This guy” is Jason Pargin, by the way, author of the wonderful John Dies at the End novels and other very fun books.
(Which reminds me, I haven’t yet read “I’m Starting to Worry About This Black Box of Doom” and “Zoey Punches the Future in the Dick”. Need to remember this for my summer reading.
Yes there are some very shitty people on the left, but I still think good politics is left wing.
Yeah, and I mean, nobody knows better how exhausting people on the left can be than the other people on the left. Like Lorcan posted in the pic thread:
But it’s usually going over the top from a place of wanting to make the world a better place. Whereas right-wing politics is mostly about me, me, me in the first place. (Even in those countries where there is supposedly a big Christian influence on conservative parties, which is why e.g. the German conservative CDU has been clashing with our churches over the issue of migration.)
Ugh.
My partner insists on buying only at organic supermarkets like Alnatura, which is financially challenging but at least we’re actually consistently eating good food.
Very much so, yeah.
Yeah. I can understand that as a Christian you feel attacked when you see people cheering for churches being burned down, even if it’s happening in the context of crimes of said church. What I’m wondering is where Arjan saw people cheering for it because right now, it’s the only example he’s given for the insane woke mob and looking for it, I’m finding it hard to find examples of people (presumably online) cheering. So it’s not quite the kind of specific example I was looking for.
Whereas I would find it very easy to give examples for actually insane reactions to so-called wokeism in the right-wing, or even mainstream, media.
For instance you had a while back in Canada the revelation that bad things were done in Catholic schools to native peoples, and now some lefties are cheering when churches get burnt down
Who specifically has cheered which church being burned down?
Maybe the term is a bit unfortunate, since woke is also used by certain right wingers to point to anything that is slightly left wing.
That’s kind of my point. On the one side you have like a few thousand people on twitter who, yes, sometimes fall into a mob mentality and hound someone who doesn’t deserve it. Sure, that’s happened. But on the other side you have a right-wing media machinery – FOX news in the US, newspapers and tabloids like the Bildzeitung in Germany – who rile up the conservatives with fake news about whatever “woke madness” it is this week, trans athletes or whatever, and you have bloody millions of people foaming at the mouth. Leading to a continual rise in right-wing criminal violence. All because people get riled up about trans athletes.
And make no mistake, trans athletes or – in Germany – using gender inclusive language is what people get violently angry about. That, and people telling them that maybe it’s not a great idea to make jokes about disabled people or minorities, and that maybe “negro”* isn’t a word that should be used anymore. That’s the woke that people hate, and it is very, very clear that they do.
*I realise that there is a discussion about reproducing this language at all, even if used as a quote and in a critical context (and to discern it from the other n-word). That still doesn’t make a lot of sense to me, sorry, I’m not quite as woke as that, I’m afraid.
I used to post a “real life” Homer Simpson in the picture thread. It was creepy then. Imagine now with AI…
Like we have to imagine.
None of us is against diversity in and of itself, none of us is against other lifestyles or races or religions or anything like that really.
I agree with pretty much everything in your post, but I don’t agree with this part – well, depending on who you mean by “us”. I think the current rise of the right shows just how many people are against diversity in and of itself. The AfD very much represents a “völkisch” idea of Germany and they have a quarter of the votes, and there are many people who aren’t only afraid of immigration but reject the notion of queerness, and even more who reject the notion of trans. They just want all of it to go away and to go back to what Germany was like, uh, in the fifties I guess. After the nazis, but before the guest workers.
Honestly if you really believe that, that that is all woke is, you’re just very naive, but I am starting to think many here are just disingenuous and arguing in bad faith.
I will start by reminding you that in all our discussions, I have never been anything but polite and respectful towards you, Arjan. I would ask you to do the same.
And where the matter is concerned, I think we just have a very different view of the world. In pretty much all cases of people raging against “woke”, what I found out it actually was was either fake news (and a completely false representation of the actual facts) or exactly what I just described it as. I am sure there are also examples of crazy people; there always are. But that’s almost never the case from what I can see.
Come on, present an example for the insanity you see as woke and let’s look at it together. Go ahead.
Of course “woke” is different things to different people, but what I call woke is basically I think a sort of rotting of the liberal system.
All woke really means though is calling out racism, sexism and other forms of bullying minorities. People mostly hate that because they want to bully minorities.
Eh woke is stupid,
Agree to disagree on that.
it’s not the biggest enemy, that’s Putinism
The point being, Putin – just like Trump and other right-wing extremists – are using people’s fear of “woke”* to push for fascism.
Yeah you might think it is a bit dystopian…But it will save lives!
This kind of thing is always nonsense. There are a lot of criminologists out there who have long identified the risk factors for people becoming criminals, and we know how to reduce that if we want to. But that is not something governments are interested in.
Holy cow, the guy just doesn’t understand basic economics.
That guy understands nothing. Except for how to manipulate crowds and bully people. He’s pretty good at that.
With Trump v 2.0 I’m not quite sure. They seem to be stepping out of that routine, scaling back their presence in Europe, whereas on the other hand you could say they just want to get a tighter grip on Europe – Musk has been promoting the AfD and palling around with Farage for instance, and it seems like now they are also supporting Le Pen. Although they may just be doing what Putin wants them to. Christian said Trump is just looking around for other authoritarian leaders to befriend. That could be true.
Well, there’s also a re-alignment based on the rejection of liberal values. Trump has decided that “wokeness” is the enemy, which makes Putin – and other authoriatarians and fascists – an ally.
Arjan’s post (that was accidentally in the funny pictures thread):
It’s interesting that the US stays staunchly behind Israel, bombing Yemen and threatening Iran, even as it is moving away from Europe. I think in the Trump era it is very much about personal sympathies and connections.
Personal sympathies, and he’s also looking towards other authoritarians. It’s the axis of (would-be-)dictators, basically. He has declared human rights, liberal values and empathy in general as the enemy and is supporting anybody who reprents his favourite thing, which is grinding the poor’s faces into the dirt with a heavy boot. Basically, fascists will always find each other*.
*Well, except for Hitler and Stalin, I guess.
Yeah, I think that’s pretty much a given at this point.
Brand is believed to have moved to the US, claiming he is being “attacked” and “shut down” by the British authorities. He interviewed Donald Trump’s eldest son, Donald Trump Jr, last year in Florida.
So he probably won’t have to worry. Trump always protects his fellow rapists.
The judge said he wasn’t opining on the merits of the case, but that courts can’t force prosecutors to move forward. Still, he expressed qualms about the government’s move, saying “there are many reasons to be troubled” by its reasoning.
[…]
“Everything here smacks of a bargain: dismissal of the indictment in exchange for immigration policy concessions,” Ho wrote. He said he found it “disturbing” that public officials might get special treatment from prosecutors by complying with policy goals.
So basically he’s saying, this should go to trial but this corruption case can’t be prosecuted because, uh, there’s been corruption preventing that.
Sounds like a broken system.
Christianity (/Judaism, /Islam) is the worst for this though, with the concept of original sin. I’m a bit surprised about Buddhism, but it does make sense that that’s a big thing there.
It’s a good question whether people would be more healthy and had higher self-esteem in a society in which the dominant religion has a more positive image of humanity.
Hmmm… what does ChatGPT have to say about this?
Yes, there have been and still are religions or spiritual traditions that focus purely on the positive aspects of human nature and don’t have a concept of sin, inherent evil, or divine punishment. Here are a few examples:
1. Jainism – Absolute Nonviolence and Personal Liberation
Jainism doesn’t have the concept of sin in the way Abrahamic religions do. Instead of sin and punishment, it teaches karma as a kind of natural consequence of one’s actions.Humans are not inherently evil—every soul is seen as inherently divine, and liberation is about shedding negative karma rather than atoning for sin.
There’s no God who judges; instead, enlightenment is achieved through self-discipline and nonviolence (ahimsa).
2. Bahá’í Faith – Human Nature as Noble
The Bahá’í Faith emphasizes that humans are born noble and capable of great good. While it acknowledges that people can make mistakes, it does not have the idea of “original sin” or inherent corruption.The focus is on unity, personal growth, and service to humanity rather than guilt or fear of punishment.
3. Certain Buddhist Traditions – No Sin, Only Ignorance
Many schools of Buddhism (especially Zen and Tibetan Buddhism) do not have a concept of sin, only ignorance (avidyā).Rather than seeing people as inherently flawed, they view suffering as a misunderstanding of reality, which can be overcome through enlightenment.
Some Buddhist traditions, like Pure Land Buddhism, emphasize compassion and grace rather than personal fault.
4. Some Indigenous Religions – Harmony, Not Guilt
Many indigenous belief systems (e.g., some Native American, African, and Polynesian traditions) do not have a concept of sin. Instead, they focus on maintaining balance and harmony with nature, spirits, and the community.Actions that disrupt this balance may be corrected, but not through punishment—rather through ritual, reconciliation, or rebalancing the cosmic order.
As for such a religion producing more positive human beings, the AI doesn’t have a straightforward answer, but it does have a pretty good one regarding the complexities of the question:
Me: What I’m wondering is, does a society in which such a positive religion is dominant produce healthier, less troubled and violent people? Can we draw any lessons from history where this is concerned?
ChatGPT:
Razoniert über Gesellschaften mit positiven Religionen für 7 Sekunden
The relationship between the nature of a dominant religion and societal outcomes is complex, and while there are intriguing correlations, drawing clear causal lessons from history is challenging. Here are a few points to consider:Multifaceted Social Dynamics
Interconnected Factors: A society’s overall health and levels of violence depend on many variables beyond its religious beliefs. Economic conditions, political stability, education, and cultural norms all interact with religious teachings. Even if a “positive” religion emphasizes inherent goodness and personal growth, the broader social context plays a significant role in shaping behavior.Historical Examples & Cultural Context
Buddhist Societies: Many predominantly Buddhist societies, which often emphasize overcoming ignorance rather than sin, are sometimes noted for lower levels of internal violence or sectarian conflict. However, attributing these outcomes solely to religious doctrine oversimplifies the picture. In countries like Thailand or Japan, for example, social harmony also emerges from long-standing cultural practices, legal systems, and community networks.Indigenous Traditions: Societies with indigenous religions that focus on balance and harmony can exhibit strong community ties and conflict-resolution practices. Yet, these communities have also faced external pressures such as colonization, which complicates any straightforward assessment of how their spiritual traditions affect societal health.
Modern Research and Psychological Insights
Positive Self-Concept: Some modern spiritual movements, which reject notions of inherent sin or guilt, promote a positive self-concept. Psychological research has found that a healthy self-image can contribute to lower stress levels and more prosocial behavior. However, it’s not entirely clear whether this directly translates to lower societal violence.Community and Belonging: Religions that emphasize unity and positive human potential often create strong community bonds and social support networks, which can help reduce feelings of isolation and marginalization—factors that are sometimes linked to social unrest or violence.
Cautions and Limitations
Correlation vs. Causation: Even if societies with more “positive” religious frameworks show lower incidences of certain social ills, it is difficult to definitively say that the religion is the primary cause. The interplay of history, culture, and other social systems makes it hard to isolate religion as the single factor.Variability Within Religions: It’s also important to note that even within religions that are generally considered “positive,” interpretations and practices can vary widely. Leaders, historical contexts, and local customs can all influence how a religion impacts society.
Lessons from History
Holistic Approaches: History suggests that promoting positive values—such as compassion, community support, and personal growth—can be beneficial. However, these values need to be part of a broader system that includes fair governance, economic opportunity, and education.Avoiding Dogmatism: One lesson might be that systems focusing on human potential and growth, rather than guilt and inherent sin, could foster environments that encourage personal responsibility and mutual support. Yet, even these systems are not immune to challenges, and they can sometimes struggle with issues like groupthink or internal conflict.
In summary, while there is evidence that societies emphasizing positive human potential can foster healthy, cohesive communities, it’s important to acknowledge that religion is just one part of a much larger societal puzzle. History provides examples that can be both inspiring and cautionary, but no single religious model has proven to be a panacea for all social ills.
Sounds about right.
I always got Bernie’s politics along the socialist side of “free this, free that, more afforable…”. He wanted to take some of the European policies as a template in the US. Means well, but the US and culture is not Europe, and his message might have been accepted if he was younger. I heard of some of these policies before and they work with smaller populations, but it’s a shame that none of this is even tried and implemented on a small scale like a US state. Hell, as it is now, most of the US don’t even like the Dem stimulus plans and national healthcare plans that would have made them better off.
Well, I think you could say that in some ways the New Deal was a template for the kind of policies that some European countries have now, and have developed further.
And I don’t know about Bernie being younger. I think there’s an argument to be made that Bernie would’ve beat Trump in 2016 (and in 2024) and the problem isn’t with the general electorate, but rather with the fucking wimp-ass Democrats.
With Vance telling the people of Greenland (Greenlandians?) how much better they’d have it as US citizens, here’s a fun little comparison from a pretty good Guardian article on the whole visit (that makes very clear just how incredibly dumb this all is):
So consider. The US is 24th in the world in the happiness rankings. Not bad. But Denmark is No 2 (after Finland). On a scale of 1 to 100, Freedom House ranks Denmark 97 and the US 84 on freedom – and the US will drop a great deal this year. An American is about 10 times more likely to be incarcerated than a Dane. Danes have access to universal and essentially free healthcare; Americans spend a huge amount of money to be sick more often and to be treated worse when they are. Danes on average live four years longer than Americans. In Denmark, university education is free; the average balance owed by the tens of millions of Americans who hold student debt in the US is about $40,000. Danish parents share a year of paid parental leave. In the US, one parent might get 12 weeks of unpaid leave. Denmark has children’s story writer Hans Christian Andersen. The US has children’s story writer JD Vance. American children are about twice as likely as Danish children to die before the age of five.
This seems like good news, but I’m also concerned that it could add fuel to the National Rally movement. It’ll inevitably be spun as a politically-motivated attack, Trump-style, which could rally her supporters.
Yeah, that’s a real danger.
On the other hand, she embezzled money (for her party) and she’s going to jail*, which is both how it’s supposed to work and kinda fucking awesome.
*not really, but kinda.
Makes more sense though, Waterstones are actually very good book stores, whereas WH Smith are mainly places where you get books and toys cheaply.
Speaking of books stores and the Netherlands, one of my favourite bookstores that I ever saw in my life is a church that’s been converted into a book store in Maastricht. Just such a beautiful place.
I wish they’d convert more churches already in Germany. There’s one in Cologne that’s a cultural event place now (I saw Henry Rollins, Lambchop and Neal Stephenson there), but it’s very much an exception, where in the UK you get the impression that every second church has been turned into a pub already (special mention to the wonderful The Church pub in Dublin, where I met up with our former member Wayne a thousand years ago.)
It’s make or break time in Turkey.
In a way, it’s encouraging that Erdoghan had to go to the length of actually arresting his rival; apparently he still isn’t able to manipulate elections to the extent he would need to in order to be sure he’s holding on to power. On the other hand, well he has arrested him and if he gets away with it, that’s probably it for what’s left of democracy in Turkey. On the other hand, it doesn’t look like he necessarily will get away with it, with the protest ongoing and building steam.
Orhan Pamuk in the Guardian:
I’ve never seen such clampdowns in Istanbul. Turkey’s democracy is fighting for its life
Orhan PamukThe jailing of President Erdoğan’s main political rival is the low point of a decade-long march towards autocracy – but the protesters aren’t done yet either
Since the arrest earlier this month of President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s main political rival, Istanbul mayor Ekrem İmamoğlu, on what are clearly trumped-up charges of corruption and terrorism, Taksim Square, the city’s biggest tourist site and hub of political protest, has been lying empty, cordoned off by police. In my 50 years living in Istanbul, I have not seen as many so-called security measures on the streets as I have over the past few days.
Taksim’s metro station and many of the city’s other busiest stations have been closed. The regional government has restricted car and intercity bus access to Istanbul. The police are checking incoming vehicles, and anyone suspected of travelling to the city to protest is turned away. Here and all over the country, televisions are permanently switched on so people can follow the latest distressing political developments. For the past week, the Istanbul governor’s office has banned public protests and political demonstrations – rights enshrined in the constitution. Yet spontaneous unauthorised protests and clashes with the police have continued unabated, even though internet access has been restricted in an attempt to prevent gatherings. The police use teargas ruthlessly and have arrested countless people.
[…]
İmamoğlu has won more votes than Erdoğan’s own party, the Justice and Development party, in Istanbul’s last three mayoral elections. When İmamoğlu defeated the party’s candidate in the April 2019 election, Erdoğan had the result annulled, citing technical irregularities. The elections were repeated two months later. İmamoğlu won again. Even more, he increased his margin. At the next round of local elections in 2024, after five years in office, İmamoğlu once again defeated Erdoğan’s party candidate and was elected mayor of Istanbul for the third time. İmamoğlu’s electoral track record and his growing popularity have made him the main opposition candidate who could successfully challenge Erdoğan at the next presidential election.
[…]
This is not a surprise for anybody who’s following Turkish politics closely. For the past decade, Turkey hasn’t been a real democracy – merely an electoral democracy, one where you can vote for your preferred candidate but have no freedom of speech or thought. Indeed, the Turkish state has strived to coerce its people into uniformity. Nobody is even talking about the many journalists and civil servants who have been arbitrarily jailed over the past few days, either in an attempt to add heft and credibility to the corruption charges against İmamoğlu or on the assumption that no one will pay attention with everything else going on.
Now, with the arrest of the country’s most popular politician – the candidate who would have won a majority of votes at the next round of national elections – even this limited form of democracy is coming to an end. This is unacceptable and distressing, and that’s why more and more people are joining the latest protests. For the time being, no one can foresee what will happen next.
The Post reports today that the IRS’ internal projections estimate that the DOGE-driven disruptions to the IRS since the inauguration are on track to have reduced tax receipts by more than $500 billion by April 15th. This, to be clear, is not a final tally. It’s not April 15th yet. It’s a projection based on historical data, the number of people who’ve filed, paid owed amounts of tax, etc. It’s worth taking a moment to put this number into some context in case half a trillion dollars doesn’t do it for you. Non-defense discretionary spending is the cost to fund the U.S. government once you take out mandatory spending (mostly Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid) and the cost of the U.S. military. For 2023 that number was $917 billion. So that’s most of the stuff we think of as the government, apart from those payment programs and the military. In other words, in about eight weeks DOGE managed to lose the U.S. government — more or less light on fire — more than half of what goes to all non-defense discretionary spending.
https://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/irs-predicts-doge-lost-half-a-trillion-dollars-for-the-usa
This is absolutely hilarious.
Promotion?
Wait, there’s nowhere left to promote him to, is there? Bugger.
Raise?
Jesus, what a shitshow.
I hadn’t even thought of that comparison, and now I feel stupid for missing it.
They even have that gigantic portrait in the movie!
I’m glad I’m not alone in that, then :)
I liked the crazy stuff at the end, too. It felt like an hommage to 90s B-movies.
Friend of mine at the theatre pointed out that this was also The Picture of Dorian Gray before I got there.
Yep. Conclusion: Don’t travel to the US at all.
Certainly rather that than not insult the rapist in chief.
People are now being denied entry into the US and turned around at the border because they’ve privately criticised Trump.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/mar/19/trump-musk-french-scientist-detained
Daily Show summary of how the Democrats are doing:
The truth is though that these can never recreate the sense of IW/Endgame because those movies built off a run of mostly very successful and well-loved movies with a strong overarching story arc that people couldn’t wait to see culminate. There isn’t that same goodwill here and there certainly isn’t that same sense of a strong narrative drive towards the finish line.
Yeah, that was my thinking. I mean, okay, so we’re in a multiverse now, but with the Kang storyline scrapped, it’s pretty clear this has all been going nowhere. Should they have been talking about how excited they are to take this multi-layered, complex narrative of a multiverse to the finishing line? I mean, come on, who would’ve bought that?
Might as well be honest about that and start with a new beginning.
The new beginning thing? Why?
Yeah, this has been a big thing over here. I have to say I find what the BND has to say about this of rather little interest. They aren’t really that great an intelligence agency, and given the CIA has been saying this for a while… well, not exactly new news, this. Merkel herself apparently had decided not to publish these findings because she didn’t trust the BND’s competences on this matter. (And presumably didn’t want to get into it with China.)
In all the reporting here, it hasn’t really become clear how the BND arrive at their conclusion. This is what our expert on matters coronavirus – who was asked to assess what the BND report said – had to say on the matter:
He was impressed by the summarised presentation of the results, explained the Director of the Institute of Virology at Charité in Berlin, who was part of a panel of experts asked by the Chancellor’s Office for an assessment. However, the source data had not been made available to the group of scientists. ‘I am therefore unable to make a scientific judgement simply due to a lack of access to data.’ In addition, all members of the panel were subject to a confidentiality obligation.
From the point of view of science and the public, it may be unsatisfactory not to receive a clear assessment. But: ‘For an evaluation according to scientific standards, the source data would have to be available and published in full so that the analyses are comprehensible and reproducible for other scientists.’ Without this release, the reported findings cannot be utilised on a scientific level.
He himself, like other researchers and the World Health Organisation (WHO), has repeatedly pointed out that all available data and information on the origin of the virus should be made available for scientific evaluation. Based on the public information available to date, there is a clear overwhelming probability of a natural origin, ‘and this is how I have always put it: there is no proof for any of the origin hypotheses, but there is a clear weighting of probability’.
[…]
Drosten still considers a natural origin of Sars-CoV-2 to be probable, as he told the newspaper taz in January – ‘and this is also assumed by almost all scientists working on the topic’. Fabian Leendertz, Director of the Helmholtz Institute for One Health in Greifswald, also told the news agency dpa that, based on the currently available – albeit weak – data, it can be assumed that transmission to humans took place via intermediate hosts, for example on animal farms.
So, from the publicly available data, random zoonosis is still most likely, but the spy agencies may have secret data that might change this view to making it more likely that it was lab-generated, but as they’re not making this data public, nobody really knows.
Again, I agree when it comes to fighting. However, a government shutdown would hit exactly the same people hardest who are also suffering from Trump’s current actions, but now the Democrats would be to blame for the hurt. It’d be a strategic boon to Trump, and it’d mean further loss of trust in the system of government in general.
You’re thinking very long-term there. Right now, making sure the Trump admin can’t blame the havok they’re wreaking on the dems may be a winning strategy for the midterms. Which in turn might turn Trump into a lame duck in the middle of his term. That seems like a good short-term goal.
I’m starting on Veep because the streaming service I currently subscribe to has it, and it is exactly what I expected it to be. Great fun.
I thought Republicans had been told not to do townhalls anymore because of this kind of stuff.
Ah, I see:
“”You see a lot of advice in Washington, D.C. from different folks saying, you know, ‘Republicans shouldn’t be out there doing town halls,’ and I’m thinking ‘Why not?’ I love the people,” said Edwards, before he left.
Well he found out didn’t he.
Given this kind of thing… You know, much as I can understand the anger at Schumer for drawing back from a government shutdown, I think he has a point strategically:
“Right now, Donald Trump owns the chaos in the government. He owns the chaos in the stock market,” he added. “In a shutdown, we would be busy fighting with Republicans over which agencies to reopen, which to keep closed, instead of debating the damage Donald Trump’s agenda is causing the American people.”
https://www.politico.com/news/2025/03/13/chuck-schumer-surrender-shutdown-00230481
If the Dems shut down the government, suddenly it’s their fault that nothing is working. Currently, Trump and Musk are achieving that without any help from the Dems whatsoever. Why would you shut down the government agencies while Trump and Musk are trying to destroy them anyway?
I saw Walz in the news today, essentially taking blame for the election loss, which is good of him but also a shame because I think he was the least to blame. He was making traction with that “they’re weird” stuff until no-nothing Democratic bigwigs decided it wasn’t the right tact. Walz seems like a genuinely good guy.
Yeah he was. And it was a good attempt to get him to catch the middle-of-the-road American voters, to have someone who – let’s be honest here – white (rural) Americans would trust. And he was a good choice for that, but a good VP candidate doesn’t really matter if nobody likes the main candidate.
There was mention about some taking out their frustrations on Kamala Harris and other Dems not being heard from since her loss. “Where is she? Where are the Obamas, Bill and Hilary, Gore… in all this?” But doesn’t the losing party step back for a while after losing? If the Dems are regrouping and working out a strategy, make it a good one.
Honestly, Harris and the Obamas and certainly Hilary should all be taking a step back and shutting up for a good long while. But at the same time, the party should be promoting the voices who are actually out there and standing against this.
AOC certainly isn’t taking a step back. Her post from yesterday:
🚨 Everyone needs to call their Dem Senator right now. They are starting to cave.
Tell them:
1. Vote NO on Cloture
AND
2. Vote NO on the Republican spending bill.Don’t let them pivot to reconciliation. GOP doesn’t need Dem votes on that and they know it.
TODAY is the showdown.
🤳🏽: (202) 224-3121
And:
It should be very clear to every Senate Democrat that any vote for Cloture will also be considered a vote for the bill.
People aren’t going to be tricked with procedural games.
They know exactly what is going on.
Defend Medicaid.
Vote NO on Cloture.
NO on bill.
The good thing is, the stock market won’t give a shit about any of that if Tesla sales continue to go down. Which they will.
I honestly think Tesla is done for. Because the simple truth is, Trumpists won’t buy electric cars. That’s not their thing. And everybody else is turning away from Musk in horror.
But to GRRM’s point, Amazon has James Bond and heavens help us all. What Disney is doing to Marvel. What Disney (really Kennedy) has done to Star Wars… I mean Darth Vader using the Force to drag back a spaceship at full throttle?!?
Star Wars is actually a good counter-example, as well. Lucas’ prequels were worse than anything that came later, and under his authorship Star Wars never got as good as Andor is.
But with your Superman examples, you’re talking about plot points or character developments, and I think that’s a bit besides the point. I think this is the kind of thing that irks GRRM, and rightly so, because the original writer of the books is the person who obviously got it right enough to make the books popular in the first place. It’s quite arrogant to think you can do better when it comes to plot or the characters. On the other hand, there may be passages or ideas in a novel that only work for a novel and that doesn’t translate to the screen, and you have to find a different solution in those cases. I think generally speaking with GoT, for example, the TV writers were completely right to simplify the story. It couldn’t have worked in the complexity that those sprawling novels have. They made some other huge mistakes, of course.
Oh, and speaking of Trump destroying the US economy, the Tesla Takedown thing is also interesting. Tesla shares have gone down to being almost back to where they were pre-election and will probably continue downward sloping. X has very little hope of ever making enough profit to pay the huge debt Musk loaded it with in order to be able to pay for it. I think Musk may be self-destructing, as a businessman.
Tesla has dipped below where it was pre-election. It’s received a tiny bump from Trump sitting in one, but I very much doubt that’ll last longer than a day.
Watching Tesla’s stock as it goes further and further down is becoming a new hobby of mine.
I mean… there’s still a basic truth to the idea that book is not a movie, though. There’s a reason why most truly great movies aren’t adaptations, and why there are no truly great novels that were adapted from a movie.
My favourite example will always be Michael Winterbottom’s wonderful adaptation of the absolutely unadaptable “Tristram Shandy” by Laurence Sterne.
Well, it’s his version of the Norse myth Amleth that originally inspired Hamlet, right?
Yup. And, I mean, the movie certainly does its own thing, as well – the plot doesn’t include a lot of the details that are in both the original source and in Shakespeare. But it did feel to me like Shakespeare’s Hamlet was also on Eggers’ mind quite a few times. The dialogues certainly had a Shakespearean tilt to them. And there was the scene in which Amleth talks to a skull. And Amleth’s single-minded desire for revenge that he enacts persistently also felt like a direct answer to Shakespeare’s dithering, doubting Hamlet.
Jesus, it’s always the same fucking problem, isn’t it? Whether it’s Labour in the UK, the German SPD or the American Democrats. Every time the fuckers finally get into power for once, they just enact policies that might as well come from the conservative parties.
Oh, and speaking of Trump destroying the US economy, the Tesla Takedown thing is also interesting. Tesla shares have gone down to being almost back to where they were pre-election and will probably continue downward sloping. X has very little hope of ever making enough profit to pay the huge debt Musk loaded it with in order to be able to pay for it. I think Musk may be self-destructing, as a businessman.
They’ll probably figure it out, of course, because this is a kleptocracy now and they’ll manage to somehow spend all of the government’s money on Musk’s and Trump’s businesses. But it would be very funny if they fucked up in doing so and just managed to ruin themselves because they’re such incredible fucking idiots.
I saw Robert Eggers’ The Northman. Liked it a lot. I remember seeing the trailers when it came out, but I hadn’t realised that this was basically Robert Eggers’ version of Hamlet. Basically, it’s a What-If-Hamlet-Wasn’t-Such-a-Fucking-Pussy version of that story. Kinda like this:
I don’t even know how to talk about US politics anymore. With his grandiose State of the Union, after having tanked the Dow Jones and badly damaging the economy in a lightning strike with his random trade war announcements (a real Liz Truss moment there) and wreaking chaos all over the country in just these few weeks… surely this can’t last for four years, right?
Which brings up how to get rid of a President. You guys have never removed a President from office*, and it’s unlikely that you ever will, even with a complete car crash like this one. Impeachment isn’t a realistic option here, no matter what happens, so… is there even another option of ending a President’s term before their time? Most countries have a vote of no confidence thingie in their constitutions to remove heads of government, but you guys don’t, do you? Unless he can proven to have committed crimes while in office, you really don’t have any way to get rid of a President, no matter how badly he’s fucked up, right? Because that’s really not a great situation, politically, as exhibit B shows.
*Well, apart from assassinating them, which doesn’t seem to be an option in Trump’s case.
I think they’re aiming at me because I thought this was hilarious, and it made me want to watch the movie more than any of the other trailers.
(And I thought The Green Knight’s cinematoraphy was absolutely lovely.)
The X-Files was always good at this. Their weird one-offs were some of their best episodes.
My favourite X-Files episode was the Rashomon-style one that switches between Mulder’s and Scully’s perspective in telling a story about them encountering (pseudo-?)vampires.
Jesus, I just looked up the episode, and it was written by Vince Gilligan. I had forgotten he wrote (and directed) for X-Files before Breaking Bad. No wonder that episode was good!
Nah, Trump’s incapable of that, as is his couch-fucking deputy.
That’s what people thought about Leto Atreides II.
Well, minus the couch-fucking.
I just realised that the even better but obviously far less known touchstone for this would be Friedrich Dürrenmatt’s play “Romulus the Great”, in which the last Roman Emperor is a buffoonish figure occupied with completely nonsensical pursuits while his Empire falls apart and the Germanic tribes are invading. The twist in the third act is that he actually is a deeply moral man who has decided that the Roman Empire must die for its crimes and is enacting this death penalty deliberately. It’s a very good comedy, and in the play the Roman Empire was a stand-in for American imperialism during the Cold War.
Oh yeah, I kind of remember that!
You know, I think this is the kind of thing we’re getting less off with these short, focused, highly thought-through seasons of TV that we mostly have nowadays in quality shows. Doing 22 episodes a season was just so much to somehow get done that you needed some filler episodes, which sometimes allowed for more ridiculous and crazy stuff to actually make it onto the TV.
