domain:epistle.us
Pongalh
2m ago
But complaining that black RAF pilots are "historically inaccurate" makes about as much sense as complaining that if Kermit is supposed to be a frog, he shouldn't look like he's made out of felt.
So there is no distinction between fantasy and a straightforward historical drama for which factual depictions are expected? You don't think an East Asian Cleopatra would be massively distracting and rightly so? Or that a morbidly obese Marilyn Monroe would be a non-starter?
James Bond and LOTR. Both are fantasy.
Hoffmeister25
American Bukelismo Enthusiast
5m ago
and to make fewer snide comments about the apparent population genetics of the Ring of Powers Shire being implausible, which is, again, missing the point on a level with complaining that a Muppet doesn't look like a real barnyard animal.
You have chosen an especially poor example with Rings Of Power, because it belies either an ignorance about the purpose behind Tolkien’s work, or else an intentional disregard for it. Tolkien’s Middle Earth stories are intended as an ersatz mythos for the historical peoples of the British Isles; the various peoples and factions of the world are rough stand-ins or symbolic idealizations of the various ethnic groups and their myths which have coalesced into the modern (white) peoples of England, Scotland, Wales, and Ireland. (And, by extension, the Celtic and North Germanic peoples of Continental Europe.) Gondor as a rough analogue for Roman-Celtic Britain, Rohan as the horse-obsessed Anglo-Saxons, Elves as the remnants of the pre-Aryan Neolithic peoples, etc. To the extent that this matters to you, it should matter that the actors involved at least plausibly physically resemble somebody belonging to, or descending from, those peoples. It matters that they’re white in a way that it doesn’t matter if the actors in a Star Wars film are white.
You dodged Nybbler’s pretty incisive point about a non-black actor playing a historically black individual. If a director set out to make a Harriet Tubman biopic and chose to cast Saiorse Ronan in the title role, there is no amount of “she just really crushed the audition, and I’ve always wanted to work with her” that would suffice to excuse what would be (correctly) interpreted at a slap in the face to black Americans. They own Harriet Tubman’s legacy in a way that white people obviously don’t. She means something to them, it’s important for them to see themselves in her, and pretty much everybody understands that.
So then the question is, are white people allowed to own any historical figures or stories of their own? Is it right and fair for white British people, a great many of whom are directly descended from RAF pilots, to expect that a casting director honor the reality of what those men looked like, sounded like, etc.? Is it fair for Brits to want to see themselves reflected accurately on screen? What about their fictional/mythical but still important figures? King Arthur? Sherlock Holmes? Jeeves and Wooster? Mr. Darcy?
I expect that your answer might be, “Sure, but that doesn’t mean any individual casting director has any obligation to care about that.” But I don’t think you actually believe that. I think you recognize that there is an explicitly redistributive aspect to modern race-swapped casting. A desire to make up for past wrongs and throw a bone to non-white actors who’ve had a relatively rougher go of it than their white companions. Isn’t that why you would “encourage” directors to keep doing it if you had the power to do so?
token_progressive
maybe not the only progressive here
8m ago
Wake me up when it's been independently verified that OpenAI didn't train on the test set again.
token_progressive
maybe not the only progressive here
9m ago
I think the MAGA base genuinely cares about seeing justice come to the children and young women victimized by this pedophile cabal. This sentiment runs deep among social conservatives.
I have a pretty hard time believing anyone with any real power cares about child sexual abuse qua child sexual abuse. And I don't mean this as a partisan claim. The Catholic Church of course had a big visible scandal, but left and right organizations alike prefer protecting power over protecting children. On a smaller scale, it's a common story (and I personally know examples, which, due to my social circle, likely all vote Democrat) for children to report their own parents covering up their abuse at the hands of an adult their parents apparently cared more about protecting than their own child. While reducing the abuse of children sounds like a great goal to, well, probably nearly everyone, in practice calls for it seem to only actually get used as a cudgel against the outgroup, and even then rarely to any significant effect.
FlailingAce
13m ago
The 'urban poor' is a pretty broad stroke. Plenty of cultures have a solid foundation in frugal cooking (e.g. 'rice and beans'). I lived near a fairly poor urban neighborhood for my first job after college, and the supermercado was bustling.
Also, anecdotally, meat theft can be a big problem. I know a junkie who used to shoplift steaks by the stack. It's relatively high value for resale, and cooking a steak is not that hard vs the payoff in deliciousness.
2rafa
17m ago
I expect this one to run until Rupert dies, and there is a strong possibility that Lachlan is close enough to his father that he will fill obliged to continue it.
Even worse, the company is now going to go to be split among his primarily progressive children, who are even more opposed to Trump than Lachlan is.
token_progressive
maybe not the only progressive here
21m ago
"The products are the same but they charge more for the ones marketed toward women!" "So if the products are the same, buy the one marketed toward men." "...No I like the pink one better."
This is a complete misrepresentation of the claim. This is the equivalent to
"It's hard to unsubscribe. The link is hidden in small white-on-white text."
"Ah, so you admit there is an unsubscribe button! Why are you complaining?"
Misrepresenting your product to trick consumers into paying more or buying something worse for the same money is bad. The companies that do it should be at least shamed, if not addressed with legal action, even if savvy consumers can manage to spend extra time to work around those tricks.
sodiummuffin
22m ago
I don't think your political enemies like references to the Floyd/Ferguson Effect regardless of what you call him. If anything derogatory partisan nicknames mean such references are less likely to be taken seriously by those they might otherwise be worried about you convincing.
2rafa
29m ago
I don’t see why 1997 would be the turning point. Mass immigration from Pakistan was relatively unrelated to the Blairwave (which actually began in the last year or two of Major’s premiership), the Mirpuri community was already large, well-settled and very fecund (much moreso than now) at that time and many of the perpetrators were second generation (this is sometimes hard to tell because the press today uses their current ages when discussing historic cases, but many if not most were 18-30 year old, born in Britain at the time of their offenses).
the police would not have gone soft on Pakistani sex offenders until well into the 1990's
I don’t think so. I suppose the prevailing narrative is that the British police may have been ‘institutionally racist’ until at least Stephen Lawrence (which if anything would make 1993 the turning point). I have my doubts about that, but in any case widespread overall racial prejudice among some white cops doesn’t mean that they would have been deliberately tough on Pakistani grooming gangs, whose victims were predominantly the (native) underclass for which most police officers would have had some degree of contempt given that they are the population they most frequently interact with (or would have interacted with, at least at that time).
Some of the articles he links to also feature local police in court saying or implying the issue was already widespread and a well known feature of local life.
MaiqTheTrue
Renrijra Krin
30m ago
I don’t think autodidact works all the time for all purposes. And I would never recommend autodidact for things that you’re going to do for a living. At the same time, I think that for a person of average intelligence, you can probably teach yourself more than you think you can. Resources beyond just the books exist, and because you’re able to go at your own pace, you can slow down when you get lost or stuck.
EverythingIsFine
Well, is eventually fine
44m ago
So, an interesting part of this dynamic is that sometimes expanded capabilities spill over into seemingly less related areas more than you’d think. For example, you might naively think that limiting your model to English would make it better, smaller, and faster. It does make it smaller, but actually stripping away the foreign language capabilities degrades the pure English performance! It prevents overfitting, and there’s good reason to suspect that it also improves the more nebulous “reasoning” skills. So, it’s quite possible and maybe even probable that stripping away too much of one thing might degrade the whole model, rather than allowing it to “specialize”.
WandererintheWilderness
44m ago
you also have to justify making it work one way only
Well, that's where the usual affirmative-action argument comes in - "black actors deserve as many job opportunities and chances to shine as white actors, and they won't get them unless you go for race-blind casting and compromise on the convention of casting for physical resemblance". Notably, this argument works even without ascribing racist animus to any casting director - it's just an emergent consequence of e.g. most historical dramas being based on western history.
And you can certainly reject that argument if you want, for all sorts of reason. I don't buy it all the way myself (I personally don't find race-blind casting distracting, and would encourage more productions to use it if it were up to me; but equally, if a director is really committed to a lifelike historical vision, I think that's their prerogative and it doesn't make them a racist, which is a hot take these days). The point I wanted to make is just that "the convention ought to be broken" is the serious pro-race-blind-casting position, which means the endless arguments about the plausibility of black WWII pilots or black Hobbits are a distraction. If they want to be taken seriously - and granted, that is an uphill battle to an unfair degree - retractors need to ask more questions like "Is it detrimental to a film's artistic worth for a white WWII pilot to be portrayed by a black actor?", and to make fewer snide comments about the apparent population genetics of the Ring of Powers Shire being implausible, which is, again, missing the point on a level with complaining that a Muppet doesn't look like a real barnyard animal.
faceh
57m ago
Yeah I was specifically thinking of WHERE you would reside to mitigate a lot of the random elements of life.
And having enough money to pick up and move if you need to is, IMHO, the final "fuck you" step.
Cirrus
1hr ago
His being an awful person is fully priced in by now and I don't see him turning out to be a kiddie-fiddler as well as all the other stuff is going to persuade anyone who isn't already persuaded.
I disagree. Trump’s awfulness had previously been directed at people the MAGA base also had issues with. Illegal immigrants, elite celebrities, Democrats, academics. In the Epstein case Trump is perceived as defending all of those people in the coverup. Now the Trump-branded awfulness is directed at his own supporters—that’s the difference. He called his own supporters losers and weaklings, using the very same rhetorical tactics to shut them up that the base chafed at so strongly when, only a year before, it was Democrats in power doing the same thing. (E.g. covering up Biden’s age-based incompetence with ludicrous claims, ‘cheap fakes’, etc.)
In addition, I think the MAGA base genuinely cares about seeing justice come to the children and young women victimized by this pedophile cabal. This sentiment runs deep among social conservatives. It relates to longstanding scandals/conspiracies involving Bill and Hillary Clinton, Bill Gates, Hollywood actors, rich financiers, and the other archetypal Republican villains for 30+ years. The base won’t let such a visceral scandal pass. This was a central promise of the Trump 2024 campaign. Trump has a real problem on his hands now.
Gaashk
1hr ago
Same with reddit's daily complaint threads about how 'the fashion industry' refuses to sell women dresses with pockets. Inevitably someone links an outlet which does offer that but is doing poorly because no one actually wants them.
This was the only example I know anything about, and it's not that simple. I tried looking up some Reddit threads, and after about half an hour, brand mentions included:
- Duluth Trading always has good pockets, so if you want pockets for hiking, gardening, and generally being outdoorsy, that's great. Can confirm, I have a coat from them, and I while I look like a giant tomato in it, I can wear it in any conditions between -40F and 40F, due to how many layers it allows me to wear under it. Do I want to fit a hat, scarf, and gloves in the main pockets, and then still have an inner pocket for money and keys? This is the coat for that! Could I wear it to an office job, or a date night? Not unless the date involves hiking in the snow (it frequently has).
- Someone said that Torrid had one pair of black pants once that offered great pockets, but she has never found them again.
- A few people mentioned cargo pants, where even the women's versions have pockets.
- There are a number of brands that sometimes have pockets, but not that often, and will sometimes say on their listing that they have pockets, but they're tiny and poorly placed, such that it's not safe to put anything inside them. If you spend a lot of time and effort, you might find something suitable in a department store. Maybe. Or maybe you just wasted two hours and will leave with no clothing (this is why I stopped shopping for clothing at department stores). Maybe they'll have something, but it will cost $200 and be dry clean only. Hard to guess.
- Target often does have pockets! The responses being: good for them! (they are not doing poorly)
- Temu and Uniqlo often have pockets! Good for them! (they are expanding quite quickly)
- A recommendation for Maya Kern skirts -- comments that other had also bought those, and liked them.
Goodguy
1hr ago
I've been temporarily banned here before for going on rants against my political opponents and so on. When I chilled out and let the matter settle, I always realized that the mods had been right to ban me. "Be no more antagonistic than is absolutely necessary for your argument" is a key rule that helps to prevent this place from turning into a largely useless cesspit of outrage bait and insanity, like Reddit or X. AlexanderTurok certainly broke that rule many times, but he is not the only one. I've broken it before. I think you've broken it before. It happens. We're emotional beings, after all. I'm about as pro free speech as it gets, but of course in order to keep this forum from turning into chimpanzee shit-flinging, some rules have to be enforced. I think that the ideal of "try to bring light instead of heat" is a good one. No matter what the content of your opinion is, there are more and less inflammatory ways to state it. And again, I say this as someone who is very pro free speech. But the pragmatic reality is that this forum would go down the tubes very quickly if the rule against being inflammatory was not enforced.
EverythingIsFine
Well, is eventually fine
1hr ago
…”the enemy”?
BurdensomeCount
—Your em dash is showing...
1hr ago
Ah, I was going more Lord Tennyson but your link works as well to describe the current situation...
The_Nybbler
In the game of roller derby, women aren't just the opposing team; they're the ball.
1hr ago
Not even wokeness can stay the powerful dramatic impulse to write a story of karmic retribution.
Goodguy
1hr ago
Clowns to the left of me, jokers to the right... here I am, stuck in the middle with you...
The_Nybbler
In the game of roller derby, women aren't just the opposing team; they're the ball.
1hr ago
I look forward to seeing an Asian Cassius Clay and a white Idi Amin.
The conventions of movies and TV are that your actor should look like your character as best as you can; unlike in live theatre, race-blind casting isn't typically a thing. Of course there's a lot of latitude -- Naveen Andrews isn't Iraqi but they can get away with casting him as a member of the Iraqi Republican Guard because the audience doesn't know an Indian from an Iraqi anyway. It doesn't extend to filling WWII-era London with black people or making a remake of Roots with half of the African characters looking like Norwegians.
You can argue that the convention ought to be broken, but then you have to deal with what I noted in my first sentence and the Roots remake -- you also have to justify making it work one way only.
RenOS
something is wrong
1hr ago
There's degrees of petty criminals. Plenty of them aren't actually nearly as ballsy as they like to pretend. If the NP store just does literally nothing, Aldi just having a guard who knows their faces and doesn't let them in might be enough. But it's hard to tell.
Throwaway05
1hr ago
Well played.
No, it isn't. It varies between "the convention ought to be broken but only in casting in the correct direction in the progressive stack" and "we aren't breaking the convention, there really were all these black people in Britain who were covered up by racist historians" (to be fair the latter was Dr. Who).
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