FtttG
User ID: 1175
FtttG
2hr ago
This is the same kind of transparent nonsense as that stupid "sealion" comic, isn't it.
FtttG
2hr ago
What "viral moment"? He wasn't filming anything. He politely asked one of his fellow citizens a rhetorical, non-personal question in a public place.
Reminds me of the time the Independent compiled a list of Prince Philip's "most excruciating gaffes" – by which they meant, of course, a list of occasions on which Prince Philip was fucking hilarious. I dare say even the author probably had a chuckle at a few of them.
"How do you keep the natives off the booze long enough to pass the test?" Asked of a Scottish driving instructor in 1995.
"British women can't cook." Winning the hearts of the Scottish Women's Institute in 1961
"What do you gargle with – pebbles?" To Tom Jones, after the Royal Variety Performance, 1969. He added the following day: "It is very difficult at all to see how it is possible to become immensely valuable by singing what I think are the most hideous songs."
"If it has four legs and it is not a chair, if it has got two wings and it flies but is not an aeroplane and if it swims and it is not a submarine, the Cantonese will eat it."
"People think there's a rigid class system here, but dukes have even been known to marry chorus girls. Some have even married Americans."
The fact that you think asking someone a question about Islamic attitudes to domestic violence — even as a "stunt" — warrants assault does not incline me to give much credence to your attitudes towards censorship. Frankly, the more I learn about your worldview, the more infuriating and alien I find it.
A doctor knowingly lying to the concerned parents of a trans-identifying child about the efficacy of "gender-affirming care" in preventing suicide? A-ok. Asking someone a question about Islamic attitudes to domestic violence? Grounds for assault.
FtttG
6hr ago
- A man posts a video on Facebook expressing his opinion that immigration to the UK is out of control, and that those migrating to the UK include "scumbags" and "psychopaths". Arrested and charged with inciting racial hatred.
- Street preacher tried (and thankfully acquitted) for "religiously aggravated intentional harassment" after saying "We love the Jews" to a Muslim family.
- Former footballer posts a tweet arguing that a certain black female football commentator was a diversity hire. Convicted for malicious communications.
- Shopkeeper posts a sign in the window of his shop explaining that, owing to "scumbags" shoplifting, he has no choice but to keep valuable items in locked cabinets. The police instruct him to remove the "offensive" sign.
- Man posts a meme depicting Pakistani men armed with knives arriving to the UK in boats, with the caption "coming to a town near you". Jailed for eight weeks.
- A woman is volunteering at a street stall offering advice for ethnic-minority women trapped in abusive relationships. A street preacher approaches her and asks her her opinion on whether domestic violence is specifically encouraged by the Koran. Arrested.
- A Jewish man carries aroud a placard mocking the recently deceased leader of Hezbollah, Hassan Nasrallah. Arrested.
- Retired police officer tweets about a rise in antisemitism since the October 7 attacks in Israel. Arrested. In a real mask-off moment, the bodycam footage of his arrest features one of the arresting officers expressing alarm about the "very Brexit-y" books on his bookshelf.
- The headteacher of a primary school retires, and the board of governors elect not to recruit a replacement, leaving the role vacant for several months. Parents of a pupil in the school (one of whom was on the board of governors last year) are exasperated by this, airing their grievances on a parents' WhatsApp group. The chair of governors objects to this and sends the parents a letter asking them to stop making disparaging comments on social media. Furious, the mother posts the letter on Facebook, venting her anger. Subsequently, the couple are arrested.
- A list of people who've been arrested (and, in some cases, convicted) for doing things like praying outside abortion clinics or holding up signs reading "here to talk, if you want".
Just to illustrate that accusations of two-tier policing are entirely warranted, a 25-year-old influencer posted a video in which she called for the deaths of all conservatives. After being questioned by the police, she was not arrested.
British man visits some friends in the states, during which trip they invite him to try his hand at firing a gun. They take some photos of him holding assorted various firearms, in a fashion which highlights his inexperience. When he gets home, he posts some of these photos on LinkedIn with self-deprecating captions.
FtttG
7hr ago
English blogger arrested for "Fuck Hamas" tweet
All the more bizarre given that they were seriously considering prosecuting the hip-hop band Kneecap for yelling "Up Hamas" during one of their gigs.
I understand the logic that it's illegal to offer support to a proscribed terrorist organisation, even if I don't agree. But it's also illegal to criticise Hamas? Are you just supposed to pretend they don't exist, or something?
FtttG
9hr ago
That progressives have done away with any sort of true belief in the ideas of John Stuart Mill is a foregone conclusion at this point.
I agree with you. But I will reiterate that there is a distinction between the government throwing you in jail because of something you said, and a jury of your peers electing not to convict someone for assaulting you because of something you said.
People have this stupid idea that a 16:9 aspect ratio is "better" than a 4:3 aspect ratio, and don't like watching movies or TV shows with black bars on either side of the image.
The obvious thing to do would have been to release a HD edition of Friends, but retaining the original aspect ratio it was intended to be broadcast in when it was filmed. But it seems the market decided that because a 16:9 edition of Friends was possible, it was therefore preferable to the original 4:3 edition, even if the 16:9 edition includes loads of distracting elements that were never intended to be displayed onscreen at all.
I loved The Onion's take on this: "U.S. Children Still Traumatized One Year After Seeing Partially Exposed Breast On TV".
FtttG
11hr ago
A possible explanation that springs to mind is that while the original on-set recording may have been done in a higher resolution format, broadcast was still at 1080p and as a result the original VFX where the vomit hose technician would have been painted out were done at 1080p and the failure to re-do the paint out at a higher resolution was a product of negligence, laziness, or penny pinching on the part of the parent company.
If this is the case (and it sounds plausible), then presumably the VFX layers in which the crew are painted out are transparent 1080p video files. Sounds like it would be trivial to upscale them to 4k and drop them into the timeline on top of your upscaled 4k live-action footage.
FtttG
11hr ago
Lucy Connolly did not call for arson. She said she wouldn't care if all the hotels were set on fire. That's quite a bit different from instructing a specific person to set a hotel on fire.
FtttG
11hr ago
if someone posts "death to the Jews" or "English people should all die in a fire," do they get Big Brother knocking on their door?
You will have to clarify if the individual is a white Briton (in which case they will throw the book at him) or not.
FtttG
11hr ago
Following on from last week's discussion about the proportion of American university students claiming to be disabled in order to secure assorted "accommodations", Hanania has an article about the legislative decisions which led to this state of affairs. It's succinct and interesting, particularly in how certain of the laws carry the tacit implication that an outright majority of Americans could be considered disabled.
The reason I'm posting it in the Fun thread rather than Culture War is because of the passage below:
My favorite court decision from this era is PGA Tour, Inc. v. Martin (2001), in which a golfer who had a condition making it difficult to walk between holes demanded to be able to ride around in a cart during the qualification tournament for the professional tour. The Supreme Court ruled on behalf of the plaintiff this time, holding that it would not alter the fundamentals of the game to grant his request.
[Antonin] Scalia responded with one of the best dissents in the history of the Supreme Court.
Before considering the Court’s answer to the first question, it is worth pointing out that the assumption which underlies that question is false. Nowhere is it writ that PGA TOUR golf must be classic “essential” golf. Why cannot the PGA TOUR, if it wishes, promote a new game, with distinctive rules (much as the American League promotes a game of baseball in which the pitcher’s turn at the plate can be taken by a “designated hitter”)? If members of the public do not like the new rules — if they feel that these rules do not truly test the individual’s skill at “real golf” (or the team’s skill at “real baseball”) they can withdraw their patronage. But the rules are the rules. They are (as in all games) entirely arbitrary, and there is no basis on which anyone – not even the Supreme Court of the United States — can pronounce one or another of them to be “nonessential” if the rulemaker (here the PGA TOUR) deems it to be essential.
If one assumes, however, that the PGA TOUR has some legal obligation to play classic, Platonic golf — and if one assumes the correctness of all the other wrong turns the Court has made to get to this point — then we Justices must confront what is indeed an awesome responsibility. It has been rendered the solemn duty of the Supreme Court of the United States, laid upon it by Congress in pursuance of the Federal Government’s power “[t]o regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States,” U.S. Const., Art. I, §8, cl. 3, to decide What Is Golf. I am sure that the Framers of the Constitution, aware of the 1457 edict of King James II of Scotland prohibiting golf because it interfered with the practice of archery, fully expected that sooner or later the paths of golf and government, the law and the links, would once again cross, and that the judges of this august Court would some day have to wrestle with that age-old jurisprudential question, for which their years of study in the law have so well prepared them: Is someone riding around a golf course from shot to shot really a golfer? The answer, we learn, is yes. The Court ultimately concludes, and it will henceforth be the Law of the Land, that walking is not a “fundamental” aspect of golf.
Either out of humility or out of self-respect (one or the other) the Court should decline to answer this incredibly difficult and incredibly silly question
This may be the first time I've actually laughed out loud at the contents of a legal opinion. You can practically see Scalia rolling his eyes.
FtttG
12hr ago
I hate to fall back on the "they're a private company, they can do what they want" argument, but there is an important distinction between the government arresting and prosecuting you because of something you said vs. a jury of your peers collectively deciding that something you said was so appalling that it retroactively exculpates the person who assaulted you.
The former is indicative of government overreach. The latter is indicative of ethical myopia and skewed priorities among political progressives. Both grave issues, but distinct ones. It's yet more evidence that Western progressives no longer see themselves as upholding the spirit of the First Amendment (even if they will grudgingly uphold it to the letter) — but then, we already knew that, they haven't even been pretending otherwise for a long time.
FtttG
14hr ago
Similarly, in Oragen a stabber was acquitted because the victim said a racial slur.
Obviously this is outrageous, but I do think it's important to put jury nullification and infringements on free speech in different categories. It's not like the victim himself was prosecuted for saying a racial slur.
- A man arrested for praying completely silently outside of an abortion clinic. (You can't even say he said something which offended someone else – he was praying inside his own head. Thoughtcrime in the most literal sense of the word possible.)
- A man convicted for misgendering someone (although it was overturned on appeal).
- A man convicted for training his dog to do a Nazi salute for a joke.
- A man convicted for taking a surreptitious photo of a police officer, drawing some cocks on it then posting it on Snapchat.
- A man who was convicted and fined for setting a Koran on fire, while the man who attacked him with a knife while he was doing so only received a suspended sentence (the Koran-burning man's conviction was overturned on appeal).
- A woman gets beaten up by a man in a manner severe enough to require hospitalisation. While venting about the experience to someone she considered a friend in a private text conversation, she refers to her assailant as a "faggot". She is, of course, convicted of a hate crime. Meanwhile, the man who beat her up has yet to be prosecuted.
FtttG
1d ago
I wasn't referring to ultrasonic frequencies (I don't think anyone's arguing that humans can hear literal dog whistles), but rather to the recording sample rate.
FtttG
1d ago
I believe you, but this is something I'd really like to verify with a double-blind. Some sound engineers claim they can tell the difference between a 192 kHz sample rate and 96 kHz, but I'm honestly sceptical.
This is a good comment, with one qualification:
While the election denial from the left has not infected the upper echelons of the dems as much as it has infected the GOP
Uhhh... Russiagate?
Immediately after he asked the woman the question, he left, and she tattled on him to the police. The police confronted him, and one of the officers was wearing a bodycam, which is where the still came from.
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