#matthew rozsa

[icedsodapop]

White women with autism are still, sadly, white women 😮‍💨 Like yeah, Courtney Love does get a lot of backlash becos ableism (Courtney Love is autistic) and misogyny, but she also got backlash becos the bitch is also fucking antiblack??

[saywhat-politics]

Scientists debate fleeing America because of Trump — or risk their research being censored

“They use fear to silence us”: Two scientists express different strategies for surviving an anti-science agenda

By MATTHEW ROZSA

Staff Writer

PUBLISHED JANUARY 3, 2025 12:00PM (EST)

[dakotapuma]

… scientists learned humans caused so many extinctions over the last 500 years that if our species had never existed, it would have taken 18,000 years for that same number of genera to have naturally vanished.

—Matthew Rozsa, staff writer for Salon.com

[howardhawkshollywoodannex]

Matthew Rozsa wrote in Salon "Shazam!" is the funniest, sweetest and most innocent movie in the DC Extended Universe - a sign that it is at last ready to compete with Marvel."

[christinamac1]

Is nuclear power a fix for climate change? Experts think it's too dangerous

Because of the inevitable production of long-lived radioactive wastes, nuclear power cannot be defined as sustainable,” “Because of the inevitable production of long-lived radioactive wastes, nuclear power cannot be defined as sustainable,” Some climate activists are pushing for expanded nuclear power — most experts think the risk is too high By MATTHEW ROZSA, Staff Writer,…

[vaniceseasonalgiftsdecor]

What climate change deniers get totally wrong about the Little Ice Age

Thanks ;Matthew Rozsa  Published ;August,8 The Hunters in the Snow by Pieter Brueghel the Elder, 1565 Wiki Commons© Provided by Salon hen we typically think of an ice age, the first thing that comes to mind is often prehistoric humans hunting wooly mammoths or battling saber-toothed tigers. Technically, an ice age is a prolonged period of colder climates when polar and mountain ice sheets are…

[biketalkla]

1:00 on.soundcloud.com/aUw3u This is Big: The Mass Central Rail Trail (MCRT), when finished, will be the longest rail trail in New England at 104 miles from Boston to Northampton, 2/3 of the way across the state. Craig Della Penna, Executive Director with Norwottuck Network, a non-profit corporation that supports the build-out and operation of the Mass Central Rail Trail, here gives Bike Talk a preview of the Norwottuck Network report about what a completed MCRT will mean to the Commonwealth. www.nnnetwork.net/

11:28 on.soundcloud.com/FV3Ao Nope: Safe street advocates shouldn't support the unsafe Valencia Street center-running bike lane recently approved by the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency, according to Valencia Street activist Stacey Randecker.

28:09 on.soundcloud.com/sMrcS A Post Car Future: Cars and capitalism discussed by Matthew Rozsa, author of articles about car dependency and inequality at Salon.com, with John Renne, a Professor in the Department of Urban and Regional Planning at Florida Atlantic University, co-author of the study "Socioeconomics of Urban Travel in the U.S." www.salon.com/2023/03/19/as-weal…r-afford-to-drive/ www.salon.com/2023/04/09/is-a-po…e-could-get-there/

46:20 on.soundcloud.com/HffFU Car Free Forever: In 2020, the City of Toronto took the bold step of closing High Park to vehicles on weekends. Now, there's a movement to make High Park permanently car free. Madeleine Bonsma-Fisher interviews Faraz Gholizadeh, co-founder of Safe Parkside.

Editing by Kevin Burton. Closing Song, "Bike," by Mal Webb. Interstitial music, "Just Moving," by Don Ward. Visit BikeTalk.org to be involved.

[arcticdementor]

(link)

[midnightfunk]

Where does McConnell factor into all of this?

Well, considering that the intelligence community unanimously agrees that Russia is still actively interfering in America's elections, it stands to reason that patriots on both sides of the aisle should want to beef up our election security so that our democracy will remain intact. Yet McConnell has obstructed legislation that would do precisely this, and the only logical explanation for him doing so is that he knows Russian meddling is likely to benefit Republican candidates. When he was called out on this with the insulting but deserved epithet "Moscow Mitch," he responded with a Senate speech in which he whined, "Keeping our republic means we can't let modern-day McCarthyism win. So here is my commitment: No matter how much they lie, no matter how much they bully, I will not be intimidated."

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a New York Democrat who has actually been accused of being a traitor simply because of her politics, responded to an analogous McConnell tweet by writing on Twitter: "McCarthyism is the practice of baselessly accusing political opponents of being communists as unjust grounds for targeting & harassment. You are blocking action to protect US elections despite official DoJ pleas. That doesn’t make you a communist. It just makes you a bad leader."

[screamscenepodcast]

Is it horror? Is it film noir? It's THE MAN IN HALF MOON STREET (1945, Murphy) starring Nils Asther and Helen Walker!

With a powerful score from Miklós Rózsa and a plot from Barré Lyndon, this certainly is A Film To Watch!

Context setting 00:00; Synopsis 18:31; Discussion 30:29; Ranking 43:21

[lokiondisneyplus]

Loki gets two nominations at the WGA Awards!!

DRAMA SERIES

The Handmaid’s Tale, Written by Yahlin Chang, Nina Fiore, Dorothy Fortenberry, Jacey Heldrich, John Herrera, Bruce Miller, Aly Monroe, Kira Snyder, Eric Tuchman; Hulu

Loki, Written by Bisha K. Ali, Elissa Karasik, Eric Martin, Michael Waldron; Disney+

The Morning Show, Written by Jeff Augustin, Brian Chamberlayne, Kerry Ehrin, Kristen Layden, Erica Lipez, Justin Matthews, Adam Milch, Stacy Osei-Kuffour, Torrey Speer, Scott Troy, Ali Vingiano; Apple TV+

Succession, Written by Jesse Armstrong, Jon Brown, Jamie Carragher, Ted Cohen, Francesca Gardiner, Lucy Prebble, Georgia Pritchett, Tony Roche, Susan Soon He Stanton, Will Tracy; HBO/HBO Max

Yellowjackets, Written by Cameron Brent Johnson, Katherine Kearns, Jonathan Lisco, Ashley Lyle, Bart Nickerson, Liz Phang, Ameni Rozsa, Sarah L. Thompson, Chantelle M. Wells; Showtime

NEW SERIES

Hacks, Written by Lucia Aniello, Joanna Calo, Jessica Chaffin, Paul W. Downs, Cole Escola, Janis E. Hirsch, Ariel Karlin, Katherine Kearns, Andrew Law, Joe Mande, Pat Regan, Samantha Riley, Michael H. Schur, Jen Statsky; HBO/HBO Max

Loki, Written by Bisha K. Ali, Elissa Karasik, Eric Martin, Michael Waldron; Disney+

Only Murders in the Building, Written by Thembi Banks, Matteo Borghese, Rachel Burger, Kirker Butler, Madeleine George, John Hoffman, Stephen Markley, Steve Martin, Kristin Newman, Ben Philippe, Kim Rosenstock, Ben Smith, Rob Turbovsky; Hulu

Reservation Dogs, Written by Tazbah Rose Chavez, Sydney Freeland, Sterlin Harjo, Migizi Pensoneau, Tommy Pico, Taika Waititi, Bobby Wilson; FX Networks

Yellowjackets, Written by Cameron Brent Johnson, Katherine Kearns, Jonathan Lisco, Ashley Lyle, Bart Nickerson, Liz Phang, Ameni Rozsa, Sarah L. Thompson, Chantelle M. Wells; Showtime

Congratulations to Michael Waldron, Bisha K. Ali, Elissa Karasik and Eric Martin on their nominations!!!

[jewish-privilege]

(...)

I was a 12 years old when I was attacked by a mob of children and called "Christ killer" — the same age Jesus was, according to the Gospel of Luke, when he lingered in the Temple of Jerusalem and impressed the elders with his intellect — so this issue is undeniably personal. That wasn't the first or last time I was bullied for being Jewish, but it was the only time I nearly died because of it: Those kids held my head underwater, chanting, "Drown the Jew!"

This incident sprang back to mind  this month as Republicans tried to figure out what to do about Greene, a particularly obnoxious Christian right-winger who has suggested that a "space laser" affiliated with Jewish banking families caused the 2018 Camp Fire in California, expressed sympathy for the anti-Semitic QAnon fantasies, promoted a video that claimed Jews are trying to destroy Europe, posed for a picture with a Ku Klux Klan leader and liked a tweet linking Israel to the assassination of John F. Kennedy.

(...)

None of this is surprising for anyone who is familiar with the history of American anti-Semitism. Greene is not an aberration, some inexplicable pimple of hatred that blemishes the American right's otherwise Jew-friendly visage. The American right has long had an anti-Semitism problem, and she's just the latest symptom.

This history of hatred "tells us much more about the anti-Semite than it tells us about Jews," Dr. Jonathan Sarna, a professor of American Jewish history at Brandeis University, told Salon. After citing an Israeli historian who refers to anti-Semitism as a "cultural code," Sarna explained that beliefs that vilify Jews as malevolent plotters who secretly control the world have a long history in American political life. "These ideas, which I think many on the left frankly had thought were done and over with, we suddenly see them full blown," he said

Before the 19th century, Sarna explained Jews were stereotypically depicted as being cursed: They were "wandering Jews" for their supposed role in killing Jesus Christ. In the modern era, however, the stereotype emerged that Jews secretly controlled the world and were responsible for everything that a given anti-Semite might regard as sinister. During the Civil War, Gen. Ulysses S. Grant blamed the Jews for cotton smuggling and expelled the entire Jewish community from areas he controlled in Kentucky, Tennessee and Mississippi. When the populist movement arose to address agrarian economic concerns in the 1890s, Jewish bankers like the Rothschilds were a frequent target among ideological leaders like William Hope "Coin" Harvey.

(...)

There's a direct line between those conspiratorial fantasies ideas from previous decades and the anti-Semitic attacks of the 21st century. "Conspiratorial thinking, by its nature, argues that everything is connected," Sarna explained. "There are no coincidences and it eschews complexity. It believes there are simple explanations based on sinister individuals who are manipulating the universe. Unsurprisingly, in a Christian setting, those are Jews."

Those ideas can evolve — Sarna pointed out that the QAnon belief in a giant child abuse ring run by Jews is analogous to the "blood libel," the medieval myth that Jews used the blood of Christian children for rituals — but the underlying assumptions have been consistent. It just so happens that, in the modern right-wing incarnation, Donald Trump's cult-like following believes that "all the enemies of Mr. Trump are now child molesters."

(...)

[Jewish comedian Larry Charles] brought up community organizer and political theorist Saul Alinsky, a favorite target of the right. "He is almost like the devil in a way," Charles observed. "He's like this radical leftist Jew, he fits all the categories. He checks all the boxes."

"Shooting some of these movies, we would see reasonable people who have this blind spot," Charles said. "They have this crazy belief, and there were all different applications and manifestations of it, that the Jews control everything. That is like a mantra amongst a certain segment of the population."

(...)

With the election of Trump in 2016, those ingrained belief systems — which for many years had been kept outside the American political mainstream — became more prominent, and their adherents more emboldened. David Weissman, a military veteran and former conservative Republican who stopped being a self-described "Trump troll" after a 2018 conversation with comedian Sarah Silverman, told Salon about his encounters with anti-Semitism on the right.

Back when he still supported Trump, Weissman recalled, he got into a "little spat" with an alt-right commentator who calls himself Baked Alaska, who was recently arrested after the Jan. 6 Capitol riot. Ultimately they moved past it, Weissman said: "We both realized we were Trump supporters" who believed "Democrats were the bad guys." Once he left MAGA world, however, Weissman said "the anti-Semitism definitely escalated" in interactions with his former allies.

"When I became a Democrat, I was called 'the k-word'" and targeted by "anti-Semitic slurs and tropes," Weissman said. Trump supporters sent "memes of me being Jewish in the oven," and "put my name in parentheses," a common tactic used by the far right to target someone for being Jewish.

(...)

"Anti-Semitism certainly did not start with Marjorie Taylor Greene, nor did it start with Donald Trump, but we have seen an exponential increase in violent anti-Semitic incidents during Donald Trump's presidency," Halie Soifer, CEO of the Jewish Democratic Council of America, told Salon. "That is no doubt related to the fact that he emboldened and aligned himself with white nationalism." She mentioned Trump equating the neo-Nazis in Charlottesville with the peaceful protesters by "commenting that there were very fine people on both sides," refusing to denounce white nationalism and telling the right-wing Proud Boys during one of the campaign debates to "stand back and stand by."

"White nationalism had existed in our country prior to that, and anti-Semitism as an element of it, but white nationalists had never had an ally in the White House until Donald Trump," Soifer said.

(...)

Donald Trump's supposed pro-Israel policies were closely aligned with those of Benjamin Netanyahu, and did nothing to correct for Trump's history of anti-Semitic words and actions. He accused Jewish Democrats of "great disloyalty" toward Israel (feeding into the stereotype that Jews have dual loyalties), removed any specific reference to Jews from a 2017 State Department statement on Holocaust Remembrance Day and has frequently used anti-Semitic dogwhistle terms by opposing "globalists" and describing himself as a "nationalist." When I interviewed Charlotte Pence, the daughter of former Vice President Mike Pence, she talked about her family's love of Israel but refused to answer a question about whether she believes Jews are going to hell — or discuss the creepy messianic theories underpinning the Christian right's support for Israel.

When I asked Larry Charles whether, based on his experiences, there's an opportunity to build bridges with anti-Semites, he was skeptical. "I have not seen a lot of opportunities for bridge building in the situations that I've been in," Charles explained. "The people that I've met through Sacha [Baron Cohen] were very rigid and dogmatic in their prejudices. There was no crossing that gulf with them. There might be tolerance, temporarily. There might be patience, temporarily. But there's no changing that belief."

I hope that Charles is wrong but suspect he is right, which raises the question of how American Jews should react to the Marjorie Taylor Greenes of the world. For want of a better alternative, I think the only solution is to be intolerant toward intolerance. House Democrats were right to strip Greene of her committee assignments, but that is not nearly enough. Social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter need to do more to limit hate speech, even if conservatives cry foul in bad faith (the First Amendment only protects people from government censorship, not consequences from private corporations). Right-wing politicians who attack prominent Jews in ways that can be plausibly construed as anti-Semitic, or by denouncing "globalists," need to lose their funding. People who oppose anti-Semitism must lead boycotts against right-wing media figures who cover for people like Greene, such as Fox News' Sean Hannity.

On a broader level, critics of anti-Semitism must recognize that this form of bigotry is part of America's long history of hate — a history which holds that only white, straight Christian "manly" men have a right to rule — and recognize our responsibility to be allies to African Americans and the Latinx community, Muslims and the LGBT community, women suffering under the patriarchy and the poor struggling to make ends meet. If we limit our empathy merely to other Jews, the implicit message is not that systemic oppression is wrong, but only that we happen to dislike it when our group is targeted. The Jewish tradition at its best instills a moral responsibility to see all the layers of oppression, and align ourselves with its victims.

[Read Matthew Rozsa’s full piece in Salon]

[itchycoil]

idk why people care about your opinion on superhero movies at all when after you trashed spiderverse for no reason

“On the other hand, there is also something a tad self-congratulatory about the whole exercise. While I don’t share Bill Maher’s rightly infamous contempt for the superhero genre, it is uncomfortable to watch any franchise indulge in this kind of horn tooting. Beneath the epic set pieces and one-liners, the constant patting of itself on the back, there is the cold, hard fact of this being the fourth “Spider-Man” canon to hit the big screen in 16 years. That averages to a brand new type of Spider-Man movie every four years: the superior version played by Tobey Maguire and directed by Sam Raimi (2002-2007), the bland reboot starring Andrew Garfield and directed by Marc Webb (2012-2014), the Marvel Cinematic Universe version with Tom Holland in the main role and directors Jon Watts and the Russo Brothers (2016-2018), and now this new one, which has more Spider-Men than I have fingers on one hand. At what point does it become creatively incestuous? When movie after movie cares less about telling its own story than about glorified metatextual navel-gazing, how much of it is clever and how much of it cynical?” - MATTHEW ROZSA

[aunti-christ-ine]

GOP gerrymandering helped Republicans hold 18 House seats in 2018 midterms

Democrats would have picked up 16 additional seats in 2018 if not for Republican gerrymandering, according to study 

MATTHEW ROZSA  MARCH 21, 2019 7:01PM (UTC)

A new study reveals that, although Democrats were able to regain control of the House of Representatives for the first time in eight years during the 2018 midterm elections, their gains were offset by the effects of Republican gerrymandering over the past decade. 

Democrats would have picked up roughly 16 additional seats from their actual total in 2018 if it had not been for partisan gerrymandering around the country, according to a new study by the Associated Press. The analysis also found that in state legislative elections, Republican redistricting may have helped them hold on to at least seven chambers that otherwise would have gone to the Democrats. 

"The AP examined all U.S. House races and about 4,900 state House and Assembly seats up for election last year using a statistical method of calculating partisan advantage that is designed to flag cases of potential political gerrymandering," the Associated Press reported. "A similar analysis also showed a GOP advantage in the 2016 elections.” 

The report added, "The AP used the so-called “efficiency gap” test in part because it was one of the analytical tools cited in a Wisconsin gerrymandering case that went before the U.S. Supreme Court in 2017 and is part of a North Carolina case scheduled to be argued on Tuesday before the court. In that case, justices will decide whether to uphold a lower court ruling that struck down North Carolina’s congressional districts as an unconstitutional political gerrymander favoring Republicans." 

The question of whether partisan gerrymandering should be allowed has long plagued the United States. The term "gerrymandering" was coined due to the pioneering tactics used in reshaping districts practiced by Vice President Elbridge Gerry, who oversaw the drawing of one district in a shape that critics claimed looked like a salamander. Last year the Supreme Court decided not to rule on a partisan gerrymandering case in Wisconsin, although it left an opening for the case to be brought back to their docket in the future.  In 2017, however, the Supreme Court did strike down gerrymandered legislative districts in North Carolina on the grounds that they were drawn up with the goal of diluting the votes of African-American citizens.

Matt Walker, president of the Republican State Leadership Committee, told Splinter News that he disagreed with the theoretical basis of the AP's study, which relied on an "efficiency gap" test.

"This is not a real formula. This is not a real theory. This is ivory-tower nonsense," Walker said.

     [ Source ] 

[votenet-blog]

The powerful politics of Killmonger

The powerful politics of Killmonger

Author: Matthew Rozsa / Source: Salon Erik Killmonger, the villain in “Black Panther,” is one of the greatest political thinkers ever to appear in a blockbuster movie. And that is about as far as I can go without delving into spoilers. If you’re reading this and haven’t seen “Black Panther,” stop what you’re doing and go watch the movie. It’s worth it and this article can wait. Now back to my…

[christinamac1]

Is nuclear power a fix for climate change? Experts think it's too dangerous

Because of the inevitable production of long-lived radioactive wastes, nuclear power cannot be defined as sustainable,” “Because of the inevitable production of long-lived radioactive wastes, nuclear power cannot be defined as sustainable,” Some climate activists are pushing for expanded nuclear power — most experts think the risk is too high By MATTHEW ROZSA, Staff Writer,…