TheDemonRazgriz
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User ID: 3577
TheDemonRazgriz
1d ago
I haven’t seen either in a very, very long time but if memory serves Antz was also more interested in using actual facts about ants to set up its world. Building tunnels and fighting with termites and all that.
I do remember preferring Antz as a kid, or at least I have a stronger memory of it, probably in large part because of the action scenes.
TheDemonRazgriz
1d ago
Nowadays even most SAHM’s send their kids to it for some reason or other, I’m not sure why.
My understanding is that this is because studies have been done that show the early socialization outside the home is beneficial for early childhood development in some way. I don’t know the details (not yet quite old enough to be worried about kids beyond a passing interest), and frankly I’m not really convinced about the benefit of getting the kid out of the house earlier than, say, preschool age, but there definitely is some kind of developmental-based backing for why it’s become a Thing.
you stick an eye patch on a kid character, you make it look like your movie is going to be A Moral Lesson And Lecture About The Differently Abled And Inclusion, not a fun sci-fi romp for the kids
I strongly suspect this was a major part of the flop, especially since the very minimal marketing really made it look like “eyepatch kid movie, also with some aliens or something.” Especially when paired with the very generic artstyle… a big draw for Pixar movies was always the excellent animation, this looked like it could’ve been any random direct-to-streaming slop.
The concept of “kid gets accidentally called up to be Earth’s ambassador to aliens” is a good idea, too! Just bring some actual creativity to the art and don’t feel obligated to make it a coming-out allegory or totally centered on him being a weird outcast or whatever (to be fair I don’t know if that last part is true but it’s hard to imagine it isn’t, what with the eyepatch and all). Clearly that’s a huge ask for Disney these days though (and by extension Pixar).
Edit to add: the title of the movie was pretty awful as well. Like who (or what) the hell is “Elio”? It gives you absolutely nothing to work with, nothing about space or aliens or anything. So matching that up with the bland art and the minimal marketing gives no hook at all to actually want to go out and see it.
Is there evidence that this is not because US-based social media actively suppresses pro-Palestinian content?
Admittedly I don’t think anyone has done that study, but honestly I find it very hard to believe. Certainly if they are they’re doing a pretty terrible job: pro-Palestine content dominates pro-Israel content on all US social media, as far as I know.
Anyway, I was doing some quick searching and I believe this is the original study I was remembering: https://networkcontagion.us/wp-content/uploads/NCRI-Report_-The-CCPs-Digital-Charm-Offensive.pdf
I think there was at least one other study done as well, but I couldn’t find it in my cursory Google search. I have an admittedly somewhat vague memory of more graphs comparing the different social media sites in terms of non-China-related political content as well that I didn’t see in this particular Rutgers study, which is entirely China-focused. I also recall reading about this topic in both the mainstream news (likely NYT but I don’t remember) and a fairly detailed substack post, possibly by Jonathan Haidt? If you want I can try harder to find it again later (I’m procrastinating at work at the moment by writing this post so my time is limited) or you can look for yourself. In my opinion the study is convincing in its main point that the TikTok algorithm emphasizes pro-Chinese and de-emphasizes anti-Chinese political content. It is not a blunt promotion/suppression, just a light-touch thumb-on-the-scale approach, but I think it shows willingness to interfere in Chinese-owned US-facing media even in the relatively peaceable geopolitical environment of today.
Honestly, though, the concern of whether the CCP is currently manipulating the algorithm is, in my view, very much secondary to the plain fact that they are capable of mandating such manipulation through their leverage over the company. I don’t think that some sort of naive free market principles (which, as far as I can see, are really the only counterargument to the ban/forced sale) justify exposing our media environment to that kind of risk.
TheDemonRazgriz
4d ago
Maybe it’s a relatively small issue, but I have been immensely disappointed in the Trump II admin’s handling of the TikTok ban (which is to say, stonewalling it seemingly at all costs).
For one, the bill has remarkably plain text which they are openly violating. I’m open to hearing examples if people here think I’m wrong about this, but I think this is qualitatively different from most of the “Imperial Presidency” actions taken by Bush and Obama (and Trump I, and Biden). To my knowledge those situations generally relied on Congress abdicating its authority to the President or to the executive branch. For example all of the 21st century’s military escapades and undeclared wars, often described as being in defiance of Congressional authority, are actually operating with explicit approval in the form of the post-9/11 AUMF. Congress could repeal it at any time and reclaim its war-making authority, it simply chooses not to. Much the same for all the myriad powers now granted to federal agencies. In this case the executive is quite nakedly saying “this law has been passed, but we don’t like it, so we won’t enforce it.” This is not a power the branch is supposed to have.
Second is the way in which this came about. Trump had campaigned as a China hawk and, iirc, publicly supported the bill until an 11th-hour turnaround which was conveniently timed after an influx of campaign funds tied to Chinese business interests. This is, at best, not a good look.
And finally I just disagree with the substance. TikTok should be banned in the US, or at least sold to US owners. All the innate problems with algorithmic social media feeds, which are frankly bad enough on their own, are massively amplified when the company which owns and operates the algorithm is beholden to an explicitly hostile foreign power. There’s already pretty incontrovertible evidence that TikTok is tuned to mildly promote divisive content and to mildly suppress content critical of China (e.g. higher rates of Palestinian-related content but lower rates of Uyghur-related content versus similar social media apps, among others). The algorithm could trivially be tuned further in the event that Chinese-US relations deteriorate further, or just if the company’s state handlers want to. I don’t see a reason why we should need to accept that risk.
TheDemonRazgriz
8d ago
I think you might be right about this one, at least in a broad way. Interestingly I think “midget rights” is/was catching on more in Britain than in the U.S., although it may have died down. As a specific example I recall watching the last season of Derry Girls with my girlfriend a few years ago and there was a midget reporter (or news anchor, or something like that, I think) whose midget-ness went completely unremarked upon by the characters, to a really implausible extent that took us out of the episode in a sort of “are we really not going to address this?” kind of way. I’m certain there were at least one or two other British TV shows from that period that did a similar thing but I can’t recall them off my head. I don’t think this particular version of woke casting ever caught on at all in American media and I suspect it died down in Britain as well, although I’m not sufficiently keyed in to the British media scene to say that for sure. I hadn’t thought about this in some time so I’m curious if any Brits (or anglophiles) here can weigh in.
As an aside, did “we”, so to speak, ever settle on a politically correct word for “midget”? I’m positive midget is considered rude but it frankly feels like the least bad way to say it, and is what I would probably choose in most cases in real life. “Little person” is ridiculously patronizing… maybe “dwarf”? That still feels weird to me, but introspecting maybe it’s what I would choose in woke company.
TheDemonRazgriz
9d ago
many vegans wouldn't consider me vegan because I eat oysters and honey
I can see how honey is at least arguably vegan-compatible, but why oysters? I guess they’re not exactly intelligent but they have nerves and such. Sincerely curious, if you’d care to elaborate.
TheDemonRazgriz
12d ago
In my opinion the true blackpill for the anti-immigration hardliners is the bipartisan refusal by the government to actually enforce E-Verify, which quite literally is already on the books (relatedly the floated exception for illegal immigrants employed in agriculture and hospitality). A crackdown on illegal immigration which refuses to penalize employers for hiring illegal immigrants is a completely unserious attempt at a crackdown. The administration seems to be optimizing for flashy headline-grabbing deportation raids while avoiding anything that might actually disrupt the status quo.
TheDemonRazgriz
22d ago
Yes, yes it does, and yes they are. Although they use the longer em-dash (often also shown as a double hyphen -- like this -- but LLMs will use the full long dash), rather than the single hyphen like you just did. I suspect it comes from the large volume of newspaper and magazine writing in the training data, since that's the place I most often see em-dashes (other than my own writing, damn it).
TheDemonRazgriz
22d ago
If memory serves it was kind of both, the "young Midwest mayor" angle made him look like the kind of reasonable centrist type the Democrats were searching for in the general and the "first gay president" angle gave him energy within the party. So the combination was very appealing in the early primary season. I think you're right that the Democratic electorate at the time was too focused on the "we absolutely must beat Trump, and we need a super-electable back-to-normalcy candidate to do so" to vote for a gay candidate as the primaries went on. But his rise within the party, before that point, was definitely very much helped by his being gay.
If you follow the upvote/downvote patterns you’ll notice that a fair chunk of the motte’s lurkers are pretty stereotypical internet right-wingers these days, of the type who are likely to read “I’m a trans woman” and instantly downvote. And/or the type who are wont to react with instant negativity to anyone saying that “the straight man dating world/heterosexual relations aren’t that bad, actually”. Sad but true.
Edit: plus some good old-fashioned identity elements. The straight men lurking the motte presumably didn’t take kindly to a queer person talking about them from outside their Lived Experience.
TheDemonRazgriz
23d ago
I agree with this. Climbing the ladder within the organized Democratic Party these days requires one to play the woke/SJW game. Anyone ambitious enough to climb rapidly (and therefore become a young national-level politician) simply must adopt those postures to make the ascent, regardless of whether they’re really a true believer or not. The party infrastructure does not encourage moderates at the “young climber” level.
Recall that Pete himself gained national-party energy during the Democratic primaries not because of any of his policy positions (which were all pretty reasonable as far as I remember, I think he would’ve been an “OK” president, certainly better than senile Biden…) but because he would have been the First Gay President. So even their one young moderate star came into his role not because of his beliefs but in spite of them, through identity politics.
TheDemonRazgriz
23d ago
Despite the utterly bizarre attempt by Biden and Harris to declare the "Equal Rights Amendment" passed (how was he not called an attempted dictator for that?)
It’s still amusing to me how little attention was paid to this, all around. It seemed like even the right wing thought it was so totally unserious as to not be worth any reaction whatsoever. I would love to hear an insider perspective of what the hell actually happened behind the scenes there.
TheDemonRazgriz
1mo ago
I’ve occasionally used ChatGPT as a glorified search engine to help find specific building codes, or to make suggestions for specific things like a roof cap suited for a certain CFM. It’s pretty effective, better than google for the kind of case where you know what you’re looking for but can’t remember where to find it. You just need to make sure to double-check what it’s saying, of course.
TheDemonRazgriz
1mo ago
Do we know for sure that the recent Liverpool one was an “attack”? Is there a known or accused motive? I admittedly have not paid much attention to the story but my first impression when it happened was that he might’ve just been very drunk.
TheDemonRazgriz
1mo ago
till my death I will point to elevatorgate as the crystallization of feminism+racism+mental issues in the social justice caucus
What is "elevatorgate"?
TheDemonRazgriz
1mo ago
If i were a US rival i'd be buying up lots of farmland around US military bases and industry
China has indeed been doing that.
I would give a strong endorsement to The War Zone (twz.com), although they’re more news than analysis, really, and so maybe not quite what you’re looking for. A lot of defense industry news and more technical articles as well. They do have their biases (in the current conflicts that’s fairly strongly pro-Ukraine and mildly pro-Israel, if memory serves) but they generally keep them in check and provide very detailed and thorough reporting. I’ve been reading them for a long while now and they rarely disappoint. In the early days of the Ukraine war they were probably the single best source for a picture of what was going on, even breaking some events first at times, and they’ve built up a good level of access to officials and industry types (especially considering they’re an independent outfit) to get interesting stories.
TheDemonRazgriz
1mo ago
Based on the circumstances of the arrest (carrying his ID, the weapon, and a mini-manifesto) I think he DID want to be caught. I suspect he came up with an escape strategy as part of his original plan, but then after going through with the act decided here’s rather be famous than get away with it.
TheDemonRazgriz
1mo ago
Im sure DC spends big amounts of money on security for the Israeli embassy
Notably this attack did not take place AT the embassy. The staffers were shot leaving an event at the Jewish Museum.
TheDemonRazgriz
1mo ago
You weren’t even a real customer, you didn’t buy anything! She could’ve told you to piss off and make space for paying customers. You could have been a journalist (honestly this is much more likely than the reality of you just being some guy who was curious), and if she was quoted or her store was mentioned in an article she could get in trouble with corporate. And who really wants to talk to a journalist at work anyway? Especially right at the start of a shift.
My opinion of the average current-year-plus-ten starbucks barista is not that high either, granted, but you were not helping yourself here. If you really wanted an answer, you should’ve ordered a small black coffee (or whatever) and asked your question while she was ringing you up.
TheDemonRazgriz
1mo ago
Having gone through engineering school pretty recently, I would say that it is different, just perhaps not as different as you’d probably like it to be.
TheDemonRazgriz
2mo ago
I didn't know India used Meteors, thanks for that -- so they do have range -- but yes the AESA seeker radar is what I believe gives the PL-15 its edge over India's air-to-air arsenal. I'll confess to not having much knowledge of how modern radars actually work in detail (I know what AESA means conceptually but not much about the implications in context) but my understanding is that it gives a significant improvement against countermeasures compared to older weapons.
TheDemonRazgriz
2mo ago
Yeah I'm a little too young to sell that one, lol. Although, funny enough, my family computer growing up was a Mac...
Yeah, I’m not surprised by that. I could imagine early-childhood daycare being better than an actively abusive or neglectful mother but that’s about it, and that’s obviously not the situation under discussion here. Before preschool age the kids aren’t even really capable of socializing as such so what plausible benefit could they get from being apart from their families? But that’s what The Science said, so I guess we’ll do it… it really seems more like a fashionable choice than something strongly thought out. Something you do because the other PMC families in town are doing it.
To be fair neither of the two families I know IRL with young children do actually fit this model. One uses daycare part of the week (3 days iirc) but because the mom works part-time. The other is my cousin, whose wife has put her legal career on hold to be a SAHM while their kids are young. So it’s not like it’s totally dominant in the culture. I do find it a strange trend though, and definitely real. Common sense should be enough to tell you that a very young child would benefit from being around its family, versus being one of 10 or 20 kids overseen by essentially a cut-rate nurse, I’d think.
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