#patriot act with hasan minhaj

[z34l0t]

[stuffilikeontheinternet]

patriot act with hasan minhaj - deep cuts - hasan's silicon valley pitch

[beemovieerotica]

I'm less concerned about a stand-up comedian slightly embellishing the truth sometimes to make a joke land, but like.

when your entire brand is "speaking truth to power" and presenting instances of racial discrimination as authentic, emotionally moving moments in your life that are reflective of larger trends in society...this directly undercuts that. and to some people, it makes the larger truths less believable

and then falling back on the "it's just comedy" bit, minhaj's style is only comedic in parts-- he hits these very serious notes, and there's an understanding that his routines are crafted for the sake of communicating important realities, and that's what he's marketed himself as, and that's why people show up--and when that's no longer understood between him and his audience, what's the point?

going beyond his brand though, fabricating childhood stories (also about discrimination) and then directly implicating a real living woman, showing her picture to your audience of thousands (albeit blurred, but there's enough information contained there), and being unconcerned when she faces death threats and he further humiliates her...? jesus fucking christ.

[yay-depression]

in honor of the paper i’m writing about TBS&TDH please have this uquiz

[dashiellqvverty]

about halfway thorugh riddler secrets in the dark and i havent looked this up yet but i feel like it MUST have a different writing team than batman unburied like the vibes are so different. i'd seen stuff about bruce's characterization and thats very clear like its obvious they felt that they HAD to make him unsympathetic to the rogues in order to provide an opposing viewpoint to the Message in the show but like. that is simply a bad way to go about it.

but also theres just a lot of dialogue that feels very empty-social-justice-buzzword-y. like i hate complaining about that bc its not like i dont want these subjects to be discussed, like i'd love if they were exploring racism and racial profiling and colonialism in a real way but thats not what theyre doing. its all very liberals patting themselves on the back for doing nothing. and from what i REMEMBER batman unburied didn't have a lot of those vibes, at least not in the snappy one-liners way

[desidarling123]

If you haven't read this expose already, please do, because it's NUTS.

TLDR; Hasan Minhaj admitted to fully just. Lying. About things that, until recently, he posited as things that actually happened to him.

Some of the craziest excerpts from this article (imo)

But was his invention of a traumatic experience with his child or with law-enforcement entrapment distasteful, given the moral heft of those things, and the fact that other people have actually experienced them? “It’s grounded in truth,” Minhaj said. “But it didn’t happen to you,” I replied.

Dude. DUDE. What the fuck?!?!

There’s a palpable discomfort among comedians when they are asked to comment on another person’s art—a sort of code of omertà. But a number of writers and performers who spoke with me bristled at Minhaj’s moralizing posture. “He tonally presents himself as a person who was always taking down the despots and dictators of the world and always speaking truth to power,” one former “Patriot Act” employee said. “That’s grating.”

Yeah, this always drove me crazy about his style, but now coupled with the truth that he's been making half his shit up? Fucking insidious.

“If he’s lying about real people and real events, that’s a problem,” the writer said. “So much of the appeal of those stories is ‘This really happened.’ ”

Exactly. Hasan's whole claim to fame is being a "truth-teller" so discovering how much of his stories are lies... yikes!

Many stories on the cancellation also mentioned a series of tweets from former female employees of color alluding to their poor work experience behind the scenes. A document reviewed by The New Yorker revealed that three women had hired an attorney and threatened litigation against Netflix and “Patriot Act” ’s production company, alleging gender discrimination, sex-based harassment, and retaliation.

I remember when these came out. My IRL acquaintances did not really believe it, but I definitely felt odd about it. No smoke without fire...

Oh, and this ending fucking FLOORED ME.

When we spoke, I asked, were he to get “The Daily Show” hosting job, if his fabrications could put him in a compromised position when commenting on someone such as George Santos. Minhaj brushed the question off. “I think, when George Santos says he’s on the volleyball team, it’s a pointless story,” he responded. Minhaj’s “fiction” was always in service to a bigger point, putting him in a different moral category than Santos. He appeared unwilling to engage with the idea that his position in the comedic landscape is unique, or that the host of a comedy news show might be held to more stringent standards of accuracy across his body of work. When it came to his stage shows, he told me, “the emotional truth is first. The factual truth is secondary.” ♦

What a bunch of word scramble to justify.... not telling the truth? "Emotional truth", what a load of garbage. It's fucking identical to the same concept "Alternative Facts" the Far-Right was pushing so hard on us just years ago.

As a POC I find this especially rankling because we fight so hard for our stories to be heard... only for some fucking rando to not just co-opt those experiences and traumas, but fully... make them up? And claim them as his own? For clout?!?!?

What a mess. Unlikely to hurt his career (unfortunately) but goddamn.

[rickchung]

Hasan Minhaj x "My Response to The New Yorker Article".

[just-an-enby-lemon]

I normally only talk about Hasan in the Unburied context because this is mainly a blog for my Riddler hyperfixation but he is such a great comedian AND an amazing journalist.

He talked about how Bolsonaro goverment was incrising the violence against native brazilians before a lot of brazilian journalists. He is ALWAYS up to talk to the people he is talking about SPECIALLY if they are a minority and unless they are clear assholes he never let's his voice be bigger than theirs. He tackled the difficult issues no one else wants to talk about and he informs things in a fun way. Also his presence in the hearing involving student loans on america was amazing. He is a great guy and an amazing comedian and a truly fantastic journalist and he deserves AT LEAST another show.

[2024skin]

I can't stop thinking about h/des t*wn I've seen it all the way thru and have heard it at least a hundred times and I dream about it at night

[shadowthief78]

i love it when people use art and other creative mediums as a way to demand social change like yes!!! you get it!! art as an expression of self, as a celebration of culture, as political protest and hope for what the world could be if we continue voting, continue trying, continue creating. keep striking, keep singing.

[pineapplepond5]

But First, Tan ft. Hasan Minhaj | Patriot Act (2018)

Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse (2023)

I knew that line in Across the Spider-Verse was a Hasan Minhaj reference. It turns out they consulted him for Pavitr's writing!

Bonus:

[stuffilikeontheinternet]

patriot act with hasan minhaj - deep cuts - hasan's deep cuts

[kaelio]

making up stuff to hate women about

[elgatodeltren]

sorry I’m not done talking about this. because once again the POINT isn’t that a comedian told a story that was Not Real. The point is that THEORETICALLY he is taking real instances of racism to comedically prove a point about the experience of POC in America. But instead he’s making shit up, which gives REALLY SHITTY PEOPLE an excuse to say that racism doesn’t ACTUALLY happen, we fixed racism in 1954 with brown vs BoE, y’all are just exaggerating

Exaggeration in stand up comedy is a given. No one is saying that the words comedians say on stage should be taken as gospel truth.

….but an exaggeration is saying “I was struck by a flying projectile” when the truth is “a friend threw a pencil at me.” A LIE is saying “I spilled a mysterious white powder from an anonymous envelope onto my toddler and we rushed her to the ER because we thought it was anthrax” when literally none of that happened

[phoenixyfriend]

Ko-Fi prompt from @dirigibird:

I've been looking at investment options but I don't want to be messing around too much with the stock market, and a co-worker suggested exchange traded funds. Would love to know your opinions!

LEGALLY NECESSARY DISCLAIMER: I am not a licensed financial advisor, and it is illegal for me to advise anyone on investment in securities like stocks. My commentary here is merely opinion, not financial advice, and I urge you to not make any decisions with regards to securities investments based on my opinions, or without consulting a licensed advisor. I am also going to be talking this all over from an American POV, which means some of these things may not apply elsewhere.

So instead of letting you know what to pick or how to organize your securities, I'm going to go through the definitions of what various investment funds are, how they compare functionally, and maybe rant about how I disagree with the stock market on a fundamental ethical level if I have word count left over.

If you want more information, and are okay with jargon, I'd suggest hitting up investopedia. That is where I will be double-checking most of my information for this one.

I also encourage folks who know more about the stock market specifically to jump in! I like to think I'm good at research and explaining things, but I'm still liable to make mistakes.

Mutual Funds: A mutual fund is a pool of money and resources from multiple individuals (often vast numbers of people, actually) being put together and managed as a group by investment specialists. The primary appeal of these is that the money is professionally managed, but not personally so; it gives smaller investors access to professional money managers that they would not have access to on their own, at cheaper rates than if they tried to hire one for just their own assets. The secondary appeal is that, due to the sheer number of people, and thus capital, that is being invested at once, the money can be invested in a wide variety of industries, and is generally more stable than investing in just one company or industry. Low risk, low reward, but overall at least mostly reliable. Retirement plans are often invested in mutual funds by employer choice, through companies like Fidelity or John Hancock.

Hedge Funds: A hedge fund is a high risk, high reward mutual fund. Investors are generally wealthy, and have the room and safety to lose large amounts of money on an investment that has no promise of success, especially since money cannot be withdrawn at will, but must remain in the fund for a period of time following investment. It gets its name from "hedging your bets," as part of the strategy is to invest in the opposition of the fund's focus in order to ensure that there is a backup plan to salvage at least some money if the main plan backfires. Other strategies are also on the riskier side, often planning to take advantage of ongoing events like buyouts, mergers, incumbent bankruptcy, and shorting stocks (that's the one that caused the gamestop incident).

Private Equity: Private equity is... a nightmare that got its own incredibly good Hasan Minhaj episode of Patriot Act, so if you've got 20 minutes, an interest in comedically-delivered, easily-digestible, Real Information, and an internet connection, take a watch of that one. (If it's not available on YouTube in your country, it's originally from Netflix, or you can probably access it by VPN.) Private equity companies are effectively hedge funds that purchase entire companies, rebuild them in one way or another, and then sell them at (hopefully) a profit. Very often, the companies purchased by private equity are very negatively impacted, especially if the private equity group is a Vulture Fund. Sometimes, it's by taking it apart to sell off; sometimes it's by just bleeding it for cash until there's nothing left. Sometimes, it's taking over a hospital and overcharging the patients while also abusing the staff! (Glaucomflecken has a lot of videos on the topic of private equity in the medical industry, check him out.)

Venture Capital: In contrast to private equity, which purchases more mature companies, venture capital is focused on startups, or small businesses that have growth potential. These are the kinds of hedge funds that are like a whole group that you'd see some random tv character calling an Angel Investor (they're not actually the same thing, but they overlap by a lot). I'd hesitantly call these less ethically dubious than private equity, but I'm still suspicious.

And finally, to answer your question on what ETFs are and how they fit into the above.

Exchange Traded Funds: ETFs are... sort of like a mutual fund. Sort of. You are, to some extent, pooling your money... ish.

An ETF is like a stock that is made out of partial stocks. So instead of paying $100 for stock A, and not getting stocks B/C/D that all cost the same, you buy $100 of the ETF, which is $25 each of stocks A/B/C/D. You are getting a quarter of a unit of stock, which isn't normally an option, but because you are purchasing through an ETF that officially already bought those Whole stocks, you can now purchase the partial stocks through them.

They buy the whole stocks, then they resell you mixes of those stocks. They still officially own the whole stocks themselves, but you now own parts of the stocks. Basically, you own "stock" in a company that owns stock in other companies, and in that process you own partial stocks in those other companies.

I'm going to re-explain this using fruit.

Imagine you can buy apples, oranges, melons, grapes, etc. You can also buy fruit cups. You can only buy the individual fruits in big batches or you can pool your money with a few other people, hand it to a chef. The chef will decide which fruits look like they'll taste the best by lunch time, buy a bunch of those fruit pallets with your combined money, and plan out the best possible fruit salad for you to share with a bunch of people once lunch rolls around.

You could also buy a fruit cup. You don't have a lot of control over what's already in the fruit cup, but there are a few different mixes available--that one has strawberries, but that one over there uses kiwi, and the other one that way has pineapple--and you can pick which mix you want. It's a pretty small fruit cup, and it's predesigned, but you can choose the one you want without having to pool money with everyone else. You just first have to let someone else design the fruit cups you choose from, and you don't know which ones are probably going to survive the best to lunch time unless you ask a chef (which defeats the purpose of buying a fruit cup instead of pooling your money, and asking the chef costs money).

That's the ETF. The ETF is the fruit cup.

The upside is that you can now just track the prices of your fruit cup, instead of tracking the prices of four different fruits, and so if the price of one fruit drops, you can just... let the other three buoy it.

Of course, in the real world, there are more than just four stocks involved in an ETF. This part of the Investopedia article lists a few examples, and they're usually themed and involve anywhere from 30 (DOW Jones) to thousands (Russell) of shares by stock type, or by commodity/industry. So with the ETF, you can invest in an entire industry, like technology, and just keep track of that single "stock" in the industry game.

They do cost less in brokerage/management fees than regular mutual funds, and they have a slightly lower liquidity (slower to cash out). There also exist actively managed ETFs, which are basically mutual funds for ETFs. You are paying the chef to buy you premade fruit cups.

(Prompt me on ko-fi!)

[khalidistan]

more claudes from 2019 plus my first claudeleth art. I drew the first illustration for eid in 2019! and I got the claude art with the sun behind him printed for free as a tote/canvas bag that I still use today. the redraw riegan is from a meme posted by patriot act with hasan minhaj.