#Posts utterly incomprehensible to the vast majority of people

[moookar]

🥦🥦🥦

Us

[workingontruth]

Our 2 Kings 7 Kind of Life

Don’t you love it when God shows up?

Have you ever missed it when God showed up?

What about now?

Today, opinions are a dime a dozen. Talk to a dozen people, and you’ll get a dozen different angles on any of a dozen subjects. But in spite of our differences of opinion on any of a wide range of topics, I think we all agree on one thing these days; had I interrupted your Christmas celebration this past December (whether or not I were wearing camel’s hair and in need of a good flossing to extract locust legs from between my teeth), telling you the following list of things would all come true in less than 90 days, you would have labeled me a complete crazy man and would’ve told me to go back beneath the rock from which I had come.

“In less than 90 days,…”

1.       You, over there in the Free Enterprise motor coach pullover (that would’ve been me) … you will be returning to the University of Indianapolis with the Men’s Lacrosse team from South Carolina before playing the final game of your trip–but oddly enough, both teams will be fully healthy, the weather will be ideal, and the trip will have been coasting along without a hitch. Oh, and the university’s administration will also require the other eight remaining U Indy teams, participating in their various collegiate sporting events from Florida to California and everywhere in between, to immediately return to campus as well. And, once you return, your entire fleet of buses will be emptied of fuel, removed from insurance plans, and put out of service–though all machines are mechanically sound and all drivers are healthy and available to drive.

2.       And you, in the red Community Hospital valet shirt (that would’ve be my wife) … you will be in your new role in the front office of the Center for Genetic Health. But having been asked not to congregate with your co-workers in the perfectly suited and newly designed office space the hospital had just finished, you and all of your co-workers will be working from home to reschedule all patient appointments sixty days or more into the future–unless they are willing to conduct their appointment over the phone or via video-chat.

3.       The NBA post-season will never happen, and the balance of the season itself will be stopped cold in its tracks at half-time of a game in the Mountain Time Zone on Wednesday, March 11th.

4.       All NCAA spring athletic events will be cancelled for the remainder of the school year and March Madness won’t happen.

5.       There will be no date set to begin the MLB season.

6.       Grocery stores will have been unable to keep chicken, ground beef, bread and toilet paper on their shelves.

7.       Gasoline will, in some places, be under a dollar a gallon, but few will be filling up.

8.       The nation’s restaurants will be closed for all dine-in experiences while the fortunate will try to stay in business by doing carry-out or drive-through business only.

9.       All shopping malls, strip malls, barber shops and hair and nail salons will be closed.

10.   The Federal Government will be sending $1,200 tax-free cash gifts to the vast majority of American citizens.

11.   The world will have a drastic shortage of personal protective equipment.

12.   The Down Jones Industrial Average will suffer 3 of its worst days since the “Black Monday” market crash in 1987 in the span of less than a week, losing roughly one-third of its value in a matter of about eight days.

13.   State governors will be requesting their citizens “shelter in place” by remaining home but for essential trips for food or health-related emergencies, while in some states it will be a finable offense to travel anywhere but to secure such.

14.   The President and VP of the United States will be holding daily, 2-hour press briefings for weeks on end.

15.   Frequent air travel will be little but a memory, international travel banned, airfares costing less than a good meal out (which will no longer be happening).

16.   The President will sign a presidential memorandum that will require the likes of General Motors to begin manufacturing respiratory ventilators.

17.   Dozens of privately held companies like Michael Lindell’s “My Pillow,” will be transformed into N-95 facemask factories.

18.   Samaritan’s Purse will have set up and be running a fully-functioning hospital in the middle of New York City’s Central Park.

19.   The United States Naval Hospital Ship “Comfort” will have been deployed to New York to help in the cause.

20.   Most people will be wearing PPE masks everywhere they go.

21.   All public concerts world-wide will be on hold.

22.   Churches will be asked not to meet, and nearly all will comply without resistance.

23.   Employees representing nearly every U.S. industry will be furloughed, let go or kept on payrolls with forgivable loans from the Fed.

24.   People will be asked to stand in lines outside Lowe’s stores at six-foot intervals to ensure active shopper customer quotas are kept while both one-way entries and exits are monitored.

25.   Many stores will be required to close down public access to much of their merchandise not deemed “essential,” to help support the cause.

26.   Pork, chicken and other meat packing plants in the U.S. will be closing down.

27.   U.S. unemployment will be at the highest rate since the Great Depression as new weekly filing claims will be counted not in the hundreds of thousands, but in the millions.

28.   The nation’s, and most of the world’s movie theaters, will be closed.

29.   People without facemasks will be shunned and avoided by “mask-wearers.”

30.   Neighbors will be sitting in their driveways and on FRONT porches again.

31.   College students will be home with their families, taking part in online classwork since all university campuses will be closed prior to semesters’ end.

32.   In lieu of our celebrating athletes and Hollywood types, doctors, nurses and healthcare workers will be the new heroes.

33.   People in some industries will be earning more to stay at home than while working full time.

34.   The Fed will be paying the unemployed an additional $600/week over and above the state provisions.

35.   All elective surgeries will be halted while hospital ORs remain unused.

36.   Online church “attendance” will skyrocket, leading to thousands and thousands of new believers.

37.   American celebrity musicians will be holding online “Global Citizen” concerts to raise millions of dollars to give to the World Health Organization which is being held liable for its part in enabling the death of hundreds of thousands in nearly 200 countries world-wide.

Would any of these things been plausible just a few months ago?

Obviously, this is only a partial list, and one to which most of us could quickly add another dozen. And NOTE they’re not all bad! Isn’t it just like God to orchestrate blessing in the face of difficulty? 

But in my mind, these “90-days-ago incomprehensible occurrences” are not unlike the similarly baffling predictions that Elisha, in 2 Kings Chapter 7, was revealing to the king and his officer.

Here’s the short version:  

Elisha replied, “Hear the word of the Lord. This is what the Lord says: About this time tomorrow, a seah [probably about 7 lbs] of the finest flour will sell for a shekel and two seahs of barley for a shekel at the gate of Samaria.” 

The officer on whose arm the king was leaning said to the man of God, “Look, even if the Lord should open the floodgates of the heavens, could this happen?”

“You will see it with your own eyes,” answered Elisha, “but you will not eat any of it!”

The officer was utterly confounded. “Really? How could this be?” And to be sure, there is no way, given their circumstance at the time, they could have concocted such an unlikely series of events.

(Read verses 3-13 to learn how this mystifying prophecy actually took place.)

But then, the verdict is recorded in the later verses...

“So they selected two chariots with their horses, and the king sent them after the Aramean army. He commanded the drivers, “Go and find out what has happened.” They followed them as far as the Jordan, and they found the whole road strewn with the clothing and equipment the Arameans had thrown away in their headlong flight. So the messengers returned and reported to the king. Then the people went out and plundered the camp of the Arameans. So a seah of the finest flour sold for a shekel, and two seahs of barley sold for a shekel, as the Lord had said.”

Now the king had put the officer on whose arm he leaned in charge of the gate, and the people trampled him in the gateway, and he died, just as the man of God had foretold when the king came down to his house. It happened as the man of God had said to the king: “About this time tomorrow, a seah of the finest flour will sell for a shekel and two seahs of barley for a shekel at the gate of Samaria.” ...but your officer will not eat any of it.

What’s my point?

God often does things in ways no man would ever script. What we deem impossible is a drop in the bucket of God’s immeasurable and endless power and insight. After all, He knows the future!  

But here’s what WE do.

If told of how the above-mentioned improbables would come true by late-March, we would have responded, “Oh I see. What a tragic series of events. But I understand now how that will happen. It all makes sense.”

And because it “makes sense” in hindsight, we disregard the overriding variable of the supernatural God into the equation and chalk up the now-plausible circumstance as nothing more than the “natural” occurrence of things.  

No matter how crazy things get, when viewing world events on merely the natural plane, most won’t need a God to “see it.” It will all make logical, cause-and-effect sense.

In the same way, I believe much of what will lead up to Revelation 12 and is told us in Daniel 11:31 and following, will likewise “make good sense” to the mind of mankind at the time. Going so far as to think of the Anti-Christ to come, we have to assume he will not come into power forcefully, but peaceably, with the full support of a global community…one that is now forming rapidly. Yes, it will all “make perfect sense,” for the answers and charismatic leadership of the one we know is to come will help to solve what will have become the world’s most pressing and previously unsolvable complexities. And the world community will give him his prominent role. 

Still, for those in Christ, let me be clear that these can be days of amazing intrigue and anticipation, not fear and worry. 

But, you see, my point is that this is how God usually chooses to bring about his plans, through a course of events that will be laced in the common sense of man … so much so that even the elect would be deceived were it possible (Matthew 24:24).

BUT, He gives light to the eyes of his children. Our great and unshakeable God has let us in on his plans. We are his friends if we do what He commands (John 15:14). And as friends of the Son of God, the Son has made known us to his agenda (John 15:15).

Now, my intention is not to insinuate we are absolutely on the cusp of the rapture of the Church, or teetering at the edge of the Tribulation–though I’m also not saying that we couldn’t be, for the Father alone only knows the day of Jesus’ return for his children (Matthew 24:30-42).

What I am saying is that if we can learn anything from history, and from an acquaintance with the scriptures, we can assume that the initial events predicted in the Bible will likely “make sense” in the moment to the mind of unregenerate man.

So, one last question. 

Given our current sermon series at my home church, Northview Church, I am wondering if you are listening, watching and fellowshipping with the Holy Spirit living inside you? It’s something about which I wrote in great length as well in SET FREE. 

Do you know the mind of Christ? Do you have the mind of Christ? 

If not, it’s time to change that. If not, you may be missing that God himself is showing up right now on planet Earth.

Place your trust in Jesus Christ. He is ready to open your eyes.

Maybe it’s time you learn more about the God who is doing something incredible right now in the midst of this unprecedented time. Maybe it’s time you gain in you the Resource that dispells anxiety and replaces it with a calm assurance the world will never understand. 

You can learn more about having a relationship with Jesus here. Or, reach out to a pastor at Northview Church by texting “NEXT” to 85379 and selecting Option 2.

God is showing up right now. Don’t miss him in the details.

Keep watching.

[mraoulee]

M. Raoulee Reviews Ghost In The Shell So You Don’t Have To Suffer

I realize what day it is and that this is a hell of a time to post my first review, especially of something people are bound to have strong opinions about.  I’d like to take a moment to blame the heap of studios who dumped money into this for the timing and state that this review is in fact, 100% serious.  It contains spoilers.  

Short Version

I bought a cup of wine before I went in.  The clerk told me to enjoy the wine; didn’t mention the movie.

I took two sips out of it before the film started, resolving to save the rest for when things got unbearable.  It was gone within two minutes.

I have no idea why anyone would remake Overdrawn At The Memory Bank and have Scarlett Johansson playing Aram as well as suddenly on an elite anti-terrorism force.  In fact, I have no idea why anyone would remake Overdrawn At The Memory Bank at all.

The only reason this isn’t my new most hated movie is that I haven’t seen the possible previous one in a while and I think I should rewatch it before I make that determination.

Long Version

I’m reviewing this as a fan of most of the originals. You want a review from a neutral party, you won’t find it here.  Ghost In The Shell was my childhood.  

Additionally, I am going to speak to the racism, but please do seek out and read thoughts on the subject by people of color.  Their anger needs an audience because holy shit.  Just… holy shit.  I’ll be editing in links and highlighting their posts on the subject.  If the original ran without them, I just wanted to get my anger out before it consumed me and I apologize for jumping the gun.

There are a few miniscule bright spots in this train wreck.  Say, five cool shots.  One of them’s of the Major storming off in a pout and turning her camo on at the same time, there’s another neat panning shot in the one apartment.  Ultimately, the few well-filmed shots take place in scenes that are wrong for other reasons, so we’ll come back to them.  I think the practical effects, what few there are, rock, but it’s hard to tell given the cinematographer’s dedication to not showing them.  

Some of the PoC bit parts slay.  Hats off to Chin Han and his amazing Togusa.  I’m so disappointed I didn’t get to see more than a minute of him even though his presence and plotline in the originals speaks more to the point the writer may have been aiming for in this film.  Way to not use your resources, writer.  Other wasted PoC actors include Danusia Samal, Lasarus Ratuere, Chris Obi, Kaori Momoi-- stuck with one of the characters that ruins the movie but still makes her endearing af --and Adwoa Aboah whose appearance I sincerely hope gets uploaded to Youtube so everyone can see her almost salvage the Major as a character strictly by virtue of her personal awesome.  

The main cast is bad.  Just bad.  

At first, I was pretty jazzed with the guy playing Batou because he looks, he even walks the part.  Then he had to go and open his mouth.  What ditch did they find that dude in and why did they not return him to that ditch with prejudice given some of that line delivery? I mean, I can see Batou’s understated done-ness posing a challenge, but there was just no excuse for this person snorting through his lines and then going WWE all over the action scenes.  

The guy playing Cutter showed up with ham in his pockets; enough ham that made me wonder why they didn’t just get Christopher Walken if they wanted that much ham on set since he actually knows how to carry his meat products effectively.  I don’t think Cutter was a well-thought-out villain at any point, but seriously, WTF.

Kuze has that much CG interference he can’t sell anything besides an ongoing dopey expression.  Probably not his fault, but still, I think a baby deer would have done better.  Why not just have Kuze manifest as a baby deer? Are baby deer that expensive? [ETA: I have been informed that they are, though I stand by my point.]

Then there’s Dr. Ouélet.  I’m not judging this actress on her job based solely on the fact she’s playing the other character who has no business being in anything billing itself as Ghost In The Shell.  I’m not judging this actress because of her accent.  I’m judging her for playing her part like a six-year-old with a mouth full of gummi worms.  If you, like most sensible people, aren’t into watching six-year-olds with mouths full of gummi worms moralize about technology, oh look, it’s another good reason to avoid this movie.  

The Major.  Oh, the Major.  There are lines in this script, particularly shoved in her mouth, which cannot be delivered well.  And they’re really obvious.  If this actress was going to gank this part it was her fucking duty to speak up about this awful shit and she clearly did not.  The one moment of good chemistry she has with Batou looks and sounds like a goof they left in.  The scene with Adwoa Aboah is good because of Adwoa Aboah.  The rest of her performance is some phoned-in nonsense.  I don’t even know what she was trying to do with the character.

Not that you get to see terribly much of her.  They CG her to hell and back.  And not well-- in general, the CG in this movie looks cheap and rushed outside of taking people’s faces apart for shock value, though that happens with enough frequency all of its impact is lost.  As for the rest of the CG, that’s especially glaring with the wide shots of the city and with the Major.  The Major looks like a character from TES: Oblivion with the actress’s head plunked on top and also a bad wig.  90% of the time, that bad wig is crooked.  The CG model for her body has different measurements than her actual body.  No effort was made to make her appear any taller, meaning that a few shot recreations and shots in general go sideways because the Major is suddenly too short.  In fact, I’m pretty sure they look bad period because her height throws things off on a regular basis.  And just-- nobody thought to bring a box.  

This movie cost millions and millions of dollars.  It went to theaters with problems that could have been solved by boxes.  Let that sink in.

Anyone who tried to redeem this film by saying it looks good has clearly never seen a movie that wasn’t shot on shitteo before.  It doesn’t.  The sloppy CG is only part of the problem, although let me mention how glaring it is to go from wide shots of a pristine, CG skeleton of a city to street shots which attempt to be as crowded and dirty as possible.  Again, I think there are some good practical effects down here, but the cinematographer.  Oh, the cinematographer.

Please, anyone who knows this asshole, take his camera away.  I’m begging you.  He fails utterly to grasp scale.  As in, I’m not sure he realized there was a problem with the Major’s height.  He doesn’t understand movement or focus.  I have no idea how he’s been getting work since the 70’s.  The fiveish good shots I counted appear to have been accidents or laziness.  Say, the panning shot in the doctor’s apartment was probably the easiest way to shoot the scene, but it works well because it gradually reduces a conversation to the two participants and makes it personal.  Or it would.  If the conversation itself didn’t suck.

Here’s the thing: he had previous iterations of a lot of the shots to work from.  He still fucked them up.  Every single shot he lifts, he blows.  It’s not even a case of things not being replicable with live actors.  It’s this man needs to have a different job.  There’s bullet time all up in a recreation of the fight in the wash.  He puts the disappearing off of a roof shot in the middle of the day and at an incomprehensible angle.  The lighting and colors are frequently just fucked up.  Did I mention the chintzy CG jellyfish all up in the dive scene… which he then doubly fucks over in the second half by cutting sloppily around the Major and Batou, not that it’s possible to cut well around Batou’s actor completely missing the point of the scene and the Major somehow managing to take off her wetsuit in a stilted fashion.  He can’t even be assed to show us the garbage man’s death.

Did I mention they kill the garbage man?

I nope out of movies for killing dogs, but I would rather the writer had killed the dog here than the garbage man.  The whole point of the garbage man was supposed to be his perfect cinnamon roll innocence in the face of vast, complex machinations far beyond his comprehension.  You would never know that from this film and it’s decision to have him be a rat bastard.  You would never know, because the writer decided to use physical elements from Ghost In The Shell rather than actually retell any form of it.  

The plot here is some cheap, moralizing leftovers.  Saying it’s supposed to be Ghost In The Shell is just offensive.  Audience, they don’t even explain how Ghost works as in-universe jargon.

There are jackasses *cough*bennett*cough* who make the argument that the plot of the original Ghost In The Shell film is sub par.  I’m pretty sure the writer here watched one of their reviews, agreed, and never bothered with any of the originals outside of vague summaries, deciding in the end to produce something which does indeed have more in common with Overdrawn At The Memory Bank than Ghost In The Shell.

I would argue that the plot of the original film is a utilitarian creature.  It exists so that the Major and the Puppet Master can talk and the audience gets the results of that, IE the resulting entity sitting on Batou’s couch in the child’s shell, as a going away present to think about.

In other words, the original Ghost In The Shell has approximately the same plot as a romance movie.

In other-other words, it’s actually really hard to fuck that up.

You see why I don’t think the author made any attempt to retell the first movie.  I don’t even think this is a combination of the two movies and the TV series as has been claimed.  The second movie’s a hot mess and can’t exist without the first one, and you can’t cram the TV series, either season, into a movie.  Hell, the sequel film didn’t even quite fit.

The plot of this film is just the same corporate greed, technology is bad tripe that’s been getting shoved at the audience since the fucking 70’s.  I imagine the writer flying an Acme jet over the audience and unloading a comically whistling payload of anvils.  The dialogue clunks, nothing new gets put on the table; hell, nothing truly from Ghost In The Shell gets put on the table.  There is no fucking point to the plot of this film, and the plot physically is not Ghost In The Shell, primarily because of the fucking anvils.  Anvils are not gifts to your audience.  You don’t think about anvils.  They’re just there.

Running with the conceit though that this was maybe at some point supposed to be Ghost In The Shell, I have some questions.  A selection: If this main character of yours is supposed to be the Major, what’s up with the pouting and helplessness? Why the fresh hell is Aramaki the only character speaking Japanese and who told you those subtitles were OK? Did anyone explain to you what the point of a Tatchikoma is and that controlling a tank with a mouse is absurd beyond that? Did anyone tell any member of the crew that the Major is actually supposed to have junk-- the lack of junk in the first movie was a censorship issue? Why is the Major the ‘first of her kind’ adapting to her new shell when in the original we got to enjoy her casually strutting around in body that was functionally leased? Why can’t her and Batou actually be friends-- was that so damn hard to write? Was it worth it to you to make Momoi’s character spout that line about Motoko ranting about technology as a child instead of something truly motherly that didn’t sound like a box of hand tools falling over? Why does Motoko need not one, but two other women who drag her through her own plot? Oh, wait.  I know that one.  It’s because you kneecapped her character and also, you’re a complete waste of space.  You got off hammering in all of those lines about consent, didn’t you, you fucking creep?

The only shred of a prop I will give the writer is that they did possibly remember that the Major is queer.

Otherwise, between them, and the director, the audience gets… someone who isn’t Motoko Kusanagi, but who purports to be her and also gets handcuffed to a stripper pole at one point.

My father howled laughing when I told him.  

You can’t use handcuffs on a cyborg in the Ghost In The Shell universe.  What part of 800 pounds of metal did you not understand? What part of Section 9 exists at least in part because of shit like that did you not understand?

In conclusion, you probably saw that I just gave the Major’s name from the Japanese version.  

It turns out, this Mira Killian is Kusanagi Motoko and there’s memory wiping involved and also she has to go visit her mommy and her obligatory sci-fi cat before she can… not get to ascend or grow as a character because she promised Mommy she’d come home.

I’m saying it’s not that they changed the Major’s ethnicity.  It’s they literally have a white woman playing a Japanese woman.  There is nothing not terrible about that.  

This movie is the perfect example of fractal wrongness.  It fails at everything it tries to do and on every level.  It’s ugly, it’s rapey, it’s racist and it’s not Ghost In The Shell.  Shame on the crew.  

To quote Mina Li: so basically it would have saved them money if they just took the negatives of the original GitS and filmed themselves taking dumps onto it.

Don’t anyone else give this trash a dime.  Go watch the 1995 movie or the TV series.  There’s no need to suffer like I did.  

Other Reviews: Rebecca Sun, Angie Han, Other Suggestions Always Welcome Because This Movie Sucks That Hard.

[keithgrosme]

Popehat Signal: Ugh, Really? OK. Everyone Has A Right To Free Speech.

Popehat Signal: Ugh, Really? OK. Everyone Has A Right To Free Speech.

New Popehat Signal courtesy of Nigel Lew. Thanks, Nigel!

When I was about 11 a few other socially inept morally spavined twerps and I recorded fake radio shows on my primitive cassette tape machine. It was mostly fart jokes, inarticulate inside-baseball ridicule of people we didn't like, and snort-laughing.

I was born too soon. Apparently these days you can make thousands of dollars a month for that sort of thing.

Let me preface this with my biases: I hate everyone in this case. I hate their ethos. I hate their culture. I hate how they pollute American discourse. Based on a representative sample I hate their fans. They are the groin flop-sweat of wretched post-modernity, the web's genetic-cul-de-sac Morlocks gaping dumbly at the slimy shrill-voiced megaphones of the parties to this case.

Nevertheless, the case involves significant First Amendment issues, which may be resolved in a way that impairs everybody's rights unless the defendants have competent counsel, which these days is ruinously expensive. This is how rights are trammelled: when we don't defend them because the defendants at hand are loathsome. Therefore, I respectfully request assistance.

The case at hand involved "internet personality" George Ouzounian, known as "Maddox." Maddox has filed suit in New York state court, alleging a dog's breakfast of causes of action against defendants including other web personalities, their employers, web platform Patreon, one of Patreon's executives, and others. The heart of the case is a tiresome dispute amongst online "comics" who have various podcasts and publications. You can find (no doubt biased) backstories of the conflict places like here and here; they are every bit as incomprehensible and tedious as you would expect of obsessive chronicles of the drooling slap-fights of online trolls. The core of the complaint is the allegation that the defendants engaged in — or tolerated, or endorsed — a campaign of harassment against Maddox, a rival.

I don't claim that every act alleged in the complaint is protected by the First Amendment — I haven't done that thorough of an analysis. However, the complaint has many of the hallmarks of vexatious and frivolous litigation calculated to chill protected speech. It seeks to hold content providers liable for the loathsome online behavior of their fans. Even if some of the defendants' speech crosses the line into defamation (and I don't know whether it does), the complaint treats online satire, ridicule, and criticism as an undifferentiated mass, and unquestionably sweeps up a substantial amount of clearly protected speech. The complaint treats boycotts and calls for boycotts as actionable. It purports to hold Patreon and one of Patreon's executives liable for failure to kick the defendants off of the platform. It names one of the defendants' employers as a party, asserting that the employer is liable for the employee's obviously non-work-related dipshittery. It demands prior restraint on speech and court-mandated apologies, both of which are patently unconstitutional. These are all elements of bad-faith censorious litigation. If they are tolerated — even against utter turds like some of the defendants — they metastasize, become precedent, and can be used more freely against you and me and people everywhere.

As I often say in these Popehat Signal posts, even an utterly frivolous suit, shot through with clear indicia of bogosity, is cheap at easy to file but ruinously expensive to the vast majority of Americans to defend. That's how censorious thugs and litigation terrorists suppress speech — by leveraging a system that gives everyone, rich or poor, the right to spend tens of thousands of dollars on an adequate constitutional defense. The more they succeed, the more thugs will file suit.

One of the individual defendants, though employed, has a modest salary and is burdened by medical debt and has grave difficulty affording counsel. If you are a lawyer admitted in New York, please consider helping him, because we defend the First Amendment and everybody's rights when we defend the speech of vile people and push back against litigation abuse.

Copyright 2017 by the named Popehat author. https://www.popehat.com/2017/11/22/popehat-signal-ugh-really-ok-everyone-has-a-right-to-free-speech/ via Blogger http://keithgros.blogspot.com/2017/11/popehat-signal-ugh-really-ok-everyone.html

[kennethmullins]

Popehat Signal: Ugh, Really? OK. Everyone Has A Right To Free Speech.

New Popehat Signal courtesy of Nigel Lew. Thanks, Nigel!

When I was about 11 a few other socially inept morally spavined twerps and I recorded fake radio shows on my primitive cassette tape machine. It was mostly fart jokes, inarticulate inside-baseball ridicule of people we didn't like, and snort-laughing.

I was born too soon. Apparently these days you can make thousands of dollars a month for that sort of thing.

Let me preface this with my biases: I hate everyone in this case. I hate their ethos. I hate their culture. I hate how they pollute American discourse. Based on a representative sample I hate their fans. They are the groin flop-sweat of wretched post-modernity, the web's genetic-cul-de-sac Morlocks gaping dumbly at the slimy shrill-voiced megaphones of the parties to this case.

Nevertheless, the case involves significant First Amendment issues, which may be resolved in a way that impairs everybody's rights unless the defendants have competent counsel, which these days is ruinously expensive. This is how rights are trammelled: when we don't defend them because the defendants at hand are loathsome. Therefore, I respectfully request assistance.

The case at hand involved "internet personality" George Ouzounian, known as "Maddox." Maddox has filed suit in New York state court, alleging a dog's breakfast of causes of action against defendants including other web personalities, their employers, web platform Patreon, one of Patreon's executives, and others. The heart of the case is a tiresome dispute amongst online "comics" who have various podcasts and publications. You can find (no doubt biased) backstories of the conflict places like here and here; they are every bit as incomprehensible and tedious as you would expect of obsessive chronicles of the drooling slap-fights of online trolls. The core of the complaint is the allegation that the defendants engaged in — or tolerated, or endorsed — a campaign of harassment against Maddox, a rival.

I don't claim that every act alleged in the complaint is protected by the First Amendment — I haven't done that thorough of an analysis. However, the complaint has many of the hallmarks of vexatious and frivolous litigation calculated to chill protected speech. It seeks to hold content providers liable for the loathsome online behavior of their fans. Even if some of the defendants' speech crosses the line into defamation (and I don't know whether it does), the complaint treats online satire, ridicule, and criticism as an undifferentiated mass, and unquestionably sweeps up a substantial amount of clearly protected speech. The complaint treats boycotts and calls for boycotts as actionable. It purports to hold Patreon and one of Patreon's executives liable for failure to kick the defendants off of the platform. It names one of the defendants' employers as a party, asserting that the employer is liable for the employee's obviously non-work-related dipshittery. It demands prior restraint on speech and court-mandated apologies, both of which are patently unconstitutional. These are all elements of bad-faith censorious litigation. If they are tolerated — even against utter turds like some of the defendants — they metastasize, become precedent, and can be used more freely against you and me and people everywhere.

As I often say in these Popehat Signal posts, even an utterly frivolous suit, shot through with clear indicia of bogosity, is cheap at easy to file but ruinously expensive to the vast majority of Americans to defend. That's how censorious thugs and litigation terrorists suppress speech — by leveraging a system that gives everyone, rich or poor, the right to spend tens of thousands of dollars on an adequate constitutional defense. The more they succeed, the more thugs will file suit.

One of the individual defendants, though employed, has a modest salary and is burdened by medical debt and has grave difficulty affording counsel. If you are a lawyer admitted in New York, please consider helping him, because we defend the First Amendment and everybody's rights when we defend the speech of vile people and push back against litigation abuse.

Copyright 2017 by the named Popehat author.

[nancydhooper]

Popehat Signal: Ugh, Really? OK. Everyone Has A Right To Free Speech.

New Popehat Signal courtesy of Nigel Lew. Thanks, Nigel!

When I was about 11 a few other socially inept morally spavined twerps and I recorded fake radio shows on my primitive cassette tape machine. It was mostly fart jokes, inarticulate inside-baseball ridicule of people we didn't like, and snort-laughing.

I was born too soon. Apparently these days you can make thousands of dollars a month for that sort of thing.

Let me preface this with my biases: I hate everyone in this case. I hate their ethos. I hate their culture. I hate how they pollute American discourse. Based on a representative sample I hate their fans. They are the groin flop-sweat of wretched post-modernity, the web's genetic-cul-de-sac Morlocks gaping dumbly at the slimy shrill-voiced megaphones of the parties to this case.

Nevertheless, the case involves significant First Amendment issues, which may be resolved in a way that impairs everybody's rights unless the defendants have competent counsel, which these days is ruinously expensive. This is how rights are trammelled: when we don't defend them because the defendants at hand are loathsome. Therefore, I respectfully request assistance.

The case at hand involved "internet personality" George Ouzounian, known as "Maddox." Maddox has filed suit in New York state court, alleging a dog's breakfast of causes of action against defendants including other web personalities, their employers, web platform Patreon, one of Patreon's executives, and others. The heart of the case is a tiresome dispute amongst online "comics" who have various podcasts and publications. You can find (no doubt biased) backstories of the conflict places like here and here; they are every bit as incomprehensible and tedious as you would expect of obsessive chronicles of the drooling slap-fights of online trolls. The core of the complaint is the allegation that the defendants engaged in — or tolerated, or endorsed — a campaign of harassment against Maddox, a rival.

I don't claim that every act alleged in the complaint is protected by the First Amendment — I haven't done that thorough of an analysis. However, the complaint has many of the hallmarks of vexatious and frivolous litigation calculated to chill protected speech. It seeks to hold content providers liable for the loathsome online behavior of their fans. Even if some of the defendants' speech crosses the line into defamation (and I don't know whether it does), the complaint treats online satire, ridicule, and criticism as an undifferentiated mass, and unquestionably sweeps up a substantial amount of clearly protected speech. The complaint treats boycotts and calls for boycotts as actionable. It purports to hold Patreon and one of Patreon's executives liable for failure to kick the defendants off of the platform. It names one of the defendants' employers as a party, asserting that the employer is liable for the employee's obviously non-work-related dipshittery. It demands prior restraint on speech and court-mandated apologies, both of which are patently unconstitutional. These are all elements of bad-faith censorious litigation. If they are tolerated — even against utter turds like some of the defendants — they metastasize, become precedent, and can be used more freely against you and me and people everywhere.

As I often say in these Popehat Signal posts, even an utterly frivolous suit, shot through with clear indicia of bogosity, is cheap at easy to file but ruinously expensive to the vast majority of Americans to defend. That's how censorious thugs and litigation terrorists suppress speech — by leveraging a system that gives everyone, rich or poor, the right to spend tens of thousands of dollars on an adequate constitutional defense. The more they succeed, the more thugs will file suit.

One of the individual defendants, though employed, has a modest salary and is burdened by medical debt and has grave difficulty affording counsel. If you are a lawyer admitted in New York, please consider helping him, because we defend the First Amendment and everybody's rights when we defend the speech of vile people and push back against litigation abuse.

Copyright 2017 by the named Popehat author. from RSSMix.com Mix ID 8247012 https://www.popehat.com/2017/11/22/popehat-signal-ugh-really-ok-everyone-has-a-right-to-free-speech/ via http://www.rssmix.com/

[roamingholiday]

Sunday, September 3rd 2017-Thursday, September 14th 2017

Classes! I go to classes now! All the time! It’s very tiring! Here is what they are:

Italian Film: Mondays for three hours and Tuesdays for an hour and a half. We’re watching movies in Italian (obviously) with English subtitles because we are pathetic Americans who cannot speak perfect Italian yet. The course is an English course, so we write a journal entry for each film, and also something of a sociology course, so we talk about what the film suggests about Italian culture in each of our journal entries. It’s also something of a history course as well, because the subject matter of the films tends towards Italian history. I really appreciate that particular aspect, because while I know quite a lot about ancient Italian history, my knowledge of modern Italian history is essentially it existed? It’s a boot and it’s in Europe and it exists? Though apparently it doesn’t actually exist, or didn’t always exist, and in fact has only existed in its current form for less than 150 years? The United States is technically older? Even if Italy has Rome and all of that ~Roman~ stuff? History is wild.

Anyway, we’ve watched neorealism films about WWII, Anni Difficili and Roma Città Aperta, and a non-neorealism film (because is wasn’t filmed in the direct aftermath? Apparently that’s the distinction) about WWII, La Vita è Bella, which has been more successful at making me utterly horrified, sickened, and completely broken as a human being than any of the films I’ve possibly ever. (Except for Pixar films which don’t count because they cannot be measured on traditional scales of emotional devastation.)

So far, the films have been really interesting, and no one has had a dramatic and pointless affair with a douchebag yet, so that’s very promising as far as I’m concerned.

Italian 1: Mondays for two hours, Wednesdays for two hours. I have. Less to say about this class. It’s a language class. It exists. I’m learning the Italian language. There’s not much more to it? My professor is very intent on us learning by doing, so there is not a lot of note taking and not a lot of explanations for why we’re saying what we’re saying, which is not really my preferred method of learning, but it’s okay.

I understand more than I can say, so far, and I understand possibly more than there is to understand, because Italian is a horribly simplified version of Latin. Like. There are only two genders? Three ending groups, in two genders? Like? Where are the five declensions and three genders that don’t mean anything because after the first two declensions they can be any gender but also mean everything? And as far as I can see things are modified for plural and singular and then just? Not? For anything else? Where are the cases? Are you telling me that every other language that I could have taken in high school did not have five declensions with different endings for both the singular and the plural of six possible cases, with three different genders that are almost entirely unrecognizable from the root word unless you memorize them by rote? What is this fudgery? And that’s not even getting into the verbs. Do you have any idea how complicated Latin verb conjugation is? Please, please, google image search Latin Verb Conjugation, and recognize that that first chart, yes, that one, the one with 138 different endings for a single verb is only the chart for the 3rd conjugation i-stem verbs and that there are four conjugations with a variant in the third, which makes five conjugations with 138 different endings for each one which makes 690 different verb endings only some of them aren’t different some of them are exactly the same as others but mean totally different things because ANCIENT ROMANS HATED ME, ME SPECIFICALLY.

Anyway. So. Yeah. Italian is not as complicated as I was lead to believe by Other Language Courses and that offends me personally.

Also I can’t tell whether no one else in my class is trying to get the pronunciation and the accent right, or if I’m just gifted or whatever, or maybe I sound as godawful as they do, but can’t they hear the difference in the vowels? They say things with such a horrible American accent that the word is literally incomprehensible and I genuinely don’t know if they don’t feel like saying it right or if they can’t. The professor doesn’t correct my pronunciation so I assume I’m getting it right, and that what I’m hearing myself say is what I’m actually saying, but in that case why can I hear the super clear and obvious differences, and they can’t? These are the kinds of questions I might ask if I was utterly lacking in social awareness, or actively wanted to be hated by my entire Italian 1 class. I am not, and do not, so instead I’m bumbling around in confusion on this blog post.

Italian Renaissance: Mondays for an hour and a half, Wednesdays for an hour and a half. The professor opened class the first day with a forty minute lecture about how this course should actually be called Dante through the Renaissance, because Dante was the most important writer in the history of Italy and also probably the world. I genuinely can’t read the word Dante and not hear it in her voice.

She’s a lovely person, though. Been teaching the class for forty years, likes to sit with us and rhapsodize about the beauty of even the translated version of the Inferno. We’re going word-by-word through each Canto right now, but it is a beautiful text, and I’ve always been a fan of obsessive close reading, because I am very good at obsessive close reading (Latin Poetry Strikes Again), so I’m totally on board.

Also Dante’s being led through hell by Virgil, and hey! I’ve read the Aeneid! I’ve read the Aeneid so many times! Do you know how many times?! I have five different copies at home! Half of them are in the original Latin! I am a nerd with no life! So that’s nice. If I ever get stuck on an essay question I can just draw on my vast knowledge of what Aeneas liked having for breakfast (pietas and divine purpose), and exactly how Virgil invoked the muses (differing, by the way, from the Greek tradition of invoking first and asking questions later, something that Dante eventually followed, if you were wondering).

Ancient City Rome: Monday for an hour and a half, Wednesday for an hour and a half. Awesome class. I mean, for the first thing, I already know at least a bit, because I took a class called The Romans last semester which, you know, covered a bit of Roman History. Just a bit. I’m one of the only classics majors in the course, so the professor picks on me, but at least I sometimes know the answer, so that’s convenient.

The professor is also great. He was the professor of one of my most favorite teachers from high school when she was a student here, which is very cool, and he’s apparently still in contact with her because he knew me from her, which was also cool. (Thanks for that, by the way. I doubt it means he’ll go easier on me, but it does mean that he always remembers my name, which is nice.) He wanders around the class (and occasionally outside of it, like, just walks out of the room and continues to talk to us under the assumption that we’re paying close enough attention to hear him) and lectures, and has clearly taught this course enough to know it frontwards backwards and sideways, which in some professors means a very dry, very boring recitation that they don’t care very much about at all, but in this car means that his lectures both cover all of the information necessary, but also involves the interjection of excellent sarcastic quips like, “My life sucks,” and “Romans were assholes.” I agree, with both of those statements.

Sustainable Environments: Thursday for three hours. I have picked sustainability focused courses to fulfill science and technology requirements for my entire time in college, because apparently I actually know a fair amount about sustainability already. Probably what comes of going to an environmentally focused school for eight years. Apparently I absorbed more information there than I thought, or, rather, people who did not go to a school that had a class called Discovery for eight years know significantly less about sustainability than I thought. We really should be educating our children more thoroughly about stuff like this, people.

So I take sustainability focused courses, because I’m genuinely interested in the subject, but also after so many years of science AP classes I deserve to be in a science class where I already know everything.

This one is mostly an interesting lesson on the differences between sustainability practices in the United States and in Italy. Rome in particular is made up of so many ancient buildings that it’s practically impossible to make any new construction, so there’s no going for sustainable design. You have to weight that, though, with the amount of waste knocking down buildings to rebuild creates, as well as the fact that the buildings created hundreds of years ago, before the industrial revolution, are far more sustainable than those built during the 1900s. Of course, that is only dependent on the climate staying relatively the same as it was when the building was created, which is not at all the case, so you’re back at square one.

So that’s it. That’s my class schedule. Also, in case you didn’t notice, eight hours of classes on Mondays. Straight. Well, not actually straight, I go at nine and leave at eight, so eleven hours at school with eight hours of classes and one break near five.

Mondays are. Long.