@Yuuki To be fair, people are lazy and do crimes with what they know.

@puzzlepiece87 IIRC, the reasons are myriad. Ranges from firefighting being pretty much only socially acceptable way of interacting with fire on a daily basis to setting stuff on fire so you can put it out and be seen as a hero.

this gets into much better detail than i can

@GodEmperorDune Complete tangent and personal bias, but I have problems with using "woke" and "unwoke" in a non-comedic manner.

Probably because most of my experience with that usage is in comedic tweets though, tbh.

@Yuuki if it helps, anyone describing themselves as "woke" is likely not. its part of a journey not a destination thing

@Yuuki That is true also.

@GodEmperorDune I agree that it's definitely a problem and the growing outrage is a sign of more people becoming aware that it's a problem. And hopefully, films like A Quiet Place are showing that you can cast properly and have a good (and more important to studios, financially successful) movie.

@Yuuki yep, i agree with this

I really wonder sometimes how much of the casting burden can be laid at the feet of the director, casting director, agent, and actor.

i think after trump's election a lot of people and groups have switched from a passive "waiting for awareness" to a "here we are and we're not waiting anymore" mode

Johansson is a bit of an outlier because of how well-known she is and how much money she has from other movies, but I would sorta hedge and say that I personally wouldn't be quite as angry/frustrated if a less well-known cis actor was cast for a trans role.

Or at least, I wouldn't be angry/frustrated with the actor.

Because Hollywood is a rough business and if you don't have the name recognition (and sometimes even if you do), you really have to take whatever you can get your hands on to survive.

But again, this doesn't really apply to Johansson.

@Yuuki i think her specific response to this as well as it being right after GITS is what put it over the top

there was a case where controversy erupted and the actor was like "i wasn't aware of this, my bad, i'm leaving so they can cast someone for better representation" but i'm struggling to remember what the actor or film was

@GodEmperorDune I'm Chinese, not Japanese, but my personal issue with the GITS movie was less the whitewashing than the fact that it was called "Ghost in the Shell". The casting would've fit the movie fine if it wasn't for the name.

In fact, the casting itself would've been a meta-commentary on whitewashing but taking the GITS name kinda ruined that angle.

@TimStone @Unionhawk Agreed wowwww that sounds unbelievably bad.

Although now I'm wondering how good the movie would be if they changed the name and cast Chloe Bennet (an actor of Asian heritage but also someone most people probably wouldn't see as Asian) instead of Johansson.

@Yuuki i've read about how she couldn't get parts when she went by "chloe wong" so she changed to "chloe bennet" and started getting offers

@GodEmperorDune I have seen countless comments on articles describing that that said something to the effect of "she's Asian? I couldn't tell".

@Yuuki sadly not surprising

Bennet, I think, would be able to use her lived experiences to honestly portray the character after the reveal and yet still be able to preserve the shock of the revelation to the audience.

@Yuuki she did it well on agents of shield

Honestly, I'm wondering about what the GITS movie could've been if they just dropped the GITS name.

@Yuuki they wanted the built in fanbase tho

It's an interesting sci-fi question about race, whitewashing, and cultural heritage.

and the rights were probably expensive

And the interplay between racial identity and personal identity.

tl;dr i love sci-fi that explores themes of humanity instead of "ooo, what if we had laser swords and time travel?"

Although the latter is still fun sometimes.

Granted, there are also thought-provoking questions of morality and advanced technology.

But I prefer sci-fi stories that use sci-fi elements to explore humanity rather than ones that ask questions about how certain technology should be used.

@Yuuki proper sci fi should do that

@Yuuki even ones that ask how technology should be used are about humanity using the tech... we're self centered that way

@GodEmperorDune Eh, I think there's a distinction to be made. Proper sci-fi can use speculative science to ask human questions (how/why are we the way we are?) and/or to ask moral questions (how/why should we do/use this thing?).

@Yuuki so where would you put arrival on those?

@GodEmperorDune By "Arrival", I'm guessing you mean the movie because there were a few changes made for the screenplay adaptation. And in the movie, it's... interesting. The human question asks why we inherently look for conflict both with each other and the aliens. The moral question is about how we should make decisions if we can see the future.

It asks both, but I honestly think it illustrates the human question better than it does the moral question.

Even if the moral question is the main character arc, I find that it's not as well done as the human question.

@Yuuki yeah the book had a different name and i didn't read it

@GodEmperorDune It was called "Story of Your Life".

Lessons From The Screenplay did a fantastic video on the changes made for the movie adaptation and how they better serve the story.

It is really impressive how inept all these people are at doing crimes while still being very excited to do them

@TimStone love to support white supremacy everywhere in the world

Ah

... how are required appointments with a probation officer supposed to help with education?

And don't probation officers already have a rough workload as it is?

It's just supposed to put disadvantaged students in custody

literal school to prison pipeline

it's not supposed to help with education it's supposed to just be pre-crime shit

yeah california has some progressive areas and other areas that are pure wtf

> One sixth grader was allegedly referred in part because school staff complained that he had used the “race card” against them.

@GodEmperorDune "And we'll punish him by showing him why people use the 'race card'!"

literally doing racism because you're being accused of doing racism

i wouldn't be surprised if saying "abolish ice" was a parole violation to these cops

Riverside sucks

@quartata hell yes

riverside and san bernadino are terrible

cops are more racist than LAPD, but smaller so they don't do as much damage

the only good memory I have of riverside is that the UC there has a bunch of fruit trees

everything else blows

and the fruit trees are probably secretly nazis

sees facebook notification of someone posting to one of the DSA groups ...no thank you I'm good, I will not look at what that person posted

Look if we want to talk about crimes we need to start with this, everything else can wait

Also today in opinions that could not possibly be any less needed:

once again filed to Advice From People Who Definitely Have Our Best Interests In Mind

@TimStone I don't get the Polish dog because it tastes good, I get it because it's $1.50 with a drink.

Now if they offer a slice of pizza with a drink combo, then I don't care about the Polish dog.

I mean, I enjoy them. But I can't believe we have to go to war with the vegans now too

@TimStone Really, the French were just stealth insulting the Germans.

> Before you freak out, the original all-beef hot dog combo – 137 million sold last year – isn’t going anywhere.

seattletimes.com/business/retail/…

something the linked article doesn't clarify I think

Source article does

Right, but that's not the same!

@TimStone Love to make school-to-prison as explicit as possible.

@Unionhawk Exactly.

@TimStone and there go the rest of his martha's vineyard invites

He apparently patched things up with those people already so that was a super cool use of reporting effort

@GodEmperorDune oh noes martha's vineyard

@TimStone oh yes martha's vineyard

@TimStone love to expense a reporting trip to martha's vineyard over the july 4th holiday

@GodEmperorDune lol like martha's vineyard people are anything but cuomo people

@Unionhawk they might know cynthia nixon personally tho

they probably also know andrew cuomo

true

in any case, dersh is still a loser and deserves to be socially ostracized

math.jpg

@TimStone THis is one of the most fucked up things I've ever read

Everyone involved in this should be sentence to life in prison. Full stop. No exceptions.

welcome to the resistance @Wipqozn

abolish & prosecute ICE

> One sixth grader was allegedly referred in part because school staff complained that he had used the “race card” against them.

What even the fuck

> Scared, confused, and without a lawyer to consult, Andrew signed the contract. He had to attend school, earn good grades, abide by an 8 p.m. curfew, participate in 25 hours of community service, meet with a probation officer regularly, follow all YAT instructions, go to counseling, go to weekly programs facilitated by the Moreno Valley Police Department, and visit a correctional facility.

No seriously, fuck all of these people

There's no way that's legal

I feel like 13 isn't old enough to sign legal binding contract

> The YAT program was created in 2001 to identify “at-risk” youth and intervene before they got into more serious trouble. But teachers, school administrators, and law enforcement officials use the program as a form of school discipline, the lawsuit asserts.

yeah that's a load of bullshit

School to prison pipeline is what it is

> From 2005 to 2016, 12,971 youths were under a YAT contract, 25 percent of whom were accused of a noncriminal offense, according to the complaint.

Jesus everytime I think my opinion of the USA can't sink lower here we gooooo

Sorry but like wtf

@Wipqozn Completely agreed.

This is your monthly reminder that if you look at exclusively bad news about something, that thing is going to look really bad.

@murgatroid99 True.

Don't get me wrong, there's a lot of bad shit happening here. But it really frustrates me that the general interaction loop in this room seems to be "Look for bad news about the US" -> "Find bad news about the US" -> "Therefore the US sucks"

I mean, the only good news about the US I've heard recently is Echo Fox somehow beating G2. But then TL lost to Splyce somehow and everything is just terrible again.

@murgatroid99 I feel like this should just be pinned constantly

Bad news gets more air time, sells more ads, etc. And lots of good things aren't news, just "people are fine and nothing is going wrong".

There isn't a news story every time a cop doesn't shoot an unarmed civilian.

@murgatroid99 too bad the cops don't release these kinds of statistics

@murgatroid99 At the same time, something like that shouldn't be "news".

@Yuuki That is exactly my point. It isn't news. "Things went normally" isn't newsworthy. And in most cases, "things went normally" is a good thing. Deviations from the norm are bad more than they're good. That's why news is bad more than it's good.

Or rather "news covers bad things more often that it does good things".

Yes, that's what I meant

And that's why extrapolating from "The news mostly talks about things are going badly" to "Things are mostly going badly" is invalid

Just needed to clarify because "news is bad" is apparently not as hot a take as perhaps it should be.

so kick the bad cops off the force and you won't have these bad news stories anymore

It's almost like it's deeper than "there is some acceptable percentage of cops shooting people that we're probably at but we can't know"

@murgatroid99 things may not be going badly for you, but they sure are for people of color worried about ICE locking them up for a few weeks regardless of their legal status

or for LGBT people worried that the supreme court will make their marriages invalid

That's not my point

Or even conversely, deeper than "many individual officers are bad"

I'm not claiming that everything is going well for everyone. I'm merely pointing out that we should be aware of the inherent bias created by viewing world events through the lens of newsworthiness

@murgatroid99 In relation to this extrapolation being invalid, supporting point, Americans right now mostly feel like things are going well where they personally live but are bad elsewhere.

Because they hear more good things about where they live but only hear news for national stuff.

Really, you should view world events through the lens of catworthiness, which is the metric by which a cat will pay attention to what you're describing. And that'll probably result in you looking at nothing but your dinner table.

As a counter-point: the concept of a school resource officer is bad regardless of the behavior of individual officers.

So I agree with you that it is technically invalid to jump from "ICE sucks" or "the police suck" to "USA sucks"

@puzzlepiece87 i am a counterexample to this but sure

Even though I'll continue to judge the USA poorly due to bad things that happen here and not in other comparable countries.

The concept of an officer whose only job is to make immigration arrests is bad

@Unionhawk Is that what you think a resource officer is?

No that's what an ice agent is

@murgatroid99 My source in agreeing with you:

You called?

> Even as national politics induces distrust and despair, most polls show rising faith in local governance. For instance, surveys typically find that only a quarter of Americans trust the national government to “do the right thing,” but Gallup polls in 2014 and 2016 found that more than 70 percent trusted their local government to do so.

James Fallows - Our Towns for The Atlantic

@puzzlepiece87 Define "local government" though. Because there was a county near Dallas that tried to pass an anti-fracking ordinance only to be overridden by the state legislature.

Both governments people might consider "local".

@puzzlepiece87 i'd argue that this is because local papers are dying so the press isn't covering local politics much anymore and people don't actually know what their local govt is up to

@GodEmperorDune PTA's pretty fuct, man.

Yeah local government tends to be more hilariously corrupt just at a smaller scale

And don't get me started on HOAs.

Don't you dare not all local government me I swear

rofl

@Yuuki i think every relative i know has an HOA embezzling story

@Unionhawk Not all lo-cal government is against soda taxes.

@Yuuki @GodEmperorDune Anecdotal af. Who do you trust more, CA state govt or Congress? Anecdotes go both ways.

@GodEmperorDune And even some relatives you don't know!

And Yuuki's example supports my point depending on how you look at it.

@puzzlepiece87 I mean, how much trust I have in the CA state gov't really doesn't matter as they have no jurisdiction over me.

@puzzlepiece87 My example was more about what you would consider as "local government". Because some people think state government is local government.

@puzzlepiece87 CA state govt is big enough to still merit coverage. i'm talking about city and county level

I'm not taking 30 seconds to look up something progressive Houston has done, you can do it yourself lol.

And a lot of state governments are problematic.

@puzzlepiece87 Well, we removed glass from recycling so there's that.

yay?

@Yuuki yeah state is not local govt imo

That was not the point, the point was never everything is perfect :P

I mean, really, we haven't had much time to do progressive or conservative stuff. Still kinda busy wrangling Harvey.

The point was always (echoing @murgatroid99) that the lens you come at something from affects how you view the thing.

@GodEmperorDune This was my favorite addition to that discussion.

I think the question of trust to do the right thing doesn't correlate well with doing the right thing

I also think we hear more good local things, but that's a plausible factor as well.

@Unionhawk It doesn't, you're totally right, but polls measure opinions not objective truth.

@puzzlepiece87 Eh, no. Local TV is where the whole "get footage of bad stuff for ratings" craze began.

And where it still thrives.

There's a reason why Nightcrawler centered around a local TV station.

@puzzlepiece87 right but I'd argue it's more of a visibility factor

@Unionhawk Yup, so did @GodEmperorDune, I think it's a good point.

But I also think if we're looking at everything, local governments also have some advantages over national ones in terms of avoiding some toxicity and actually doing work.

@Unionhawk the lesson of the trump admin (regardless of that some of these things were happening long before trump was elected) seems to be that govt is capable of terrible things unless we specifically and forcefully prevent them

we used to think "norms" were a good enough deterrent, that's out the window

Prior to OLOD if you asked cincinnatians about the library board they'd probably go "yeah, probably, I guess" meanwhile they're in a back room with a board member's real estate son

Well said and thanks for bringing that to light.

whether laws themselves and the court system are a good enough deterrent is up in the air right now, as they seem to be weak to politicians declaring decisions against them to be "politically motivated" and continuing to do whatever they want

i don't know what else is left if the courts go too

For me it's not about finding the light it's about creating the light

@Ash the thai soccer team escaped the flooded cave

@GodEmperorDune Just in thai-me too (@Wipqozn @Ash).

@Wipqozn It's not, it's voidable

@Ash Yep, all 12 members of the soccer team as well as the coaches, IIRC.

@Ash yep, everyone is out

@Yuuki and the remaining rescuers

I will take some thai-me to reflect on my transgressions.

absolutely not

unacceptable

@Yuuki thyme will only make the waiting more delicious

I wanted to make another pun but Thailand's capital already took care of that for me.

@Ash Am?

For reference: "Thailand, formerly known as Siam".

Repeating a bad pun does not make it better

@KevinvanderVelden It doesn't make it better, but doing so in short order can be considered thai-mely.

android hell

pls

Look, everyone's en-thai-tled to their own opinions.

everyone except you

you have lost your opinion rights

You're being en-thai-erly too aggressive about this.

No it's a pretty clear case of bad punmanship

@Yuuki I concur with you :D

sorry y'all, this is boring but has very not good consequences

> ability to meet the particular needs of the agency

Is the operative phrase, I'm assuming.

@Yuuki right, the agency needs new judges to hear asylum cases that are going to reject all of them, for example

> ALJs cannot be recognized as members of the judicial branch of government

oh huh

That's weird. They're judges but actually are part of the executive branch, I guess.

Wonder if the APA still holds though.

it's like a clerk with extra powers

> ALJs are generally considered to be part of the executive branch, not the judicial branch, but the APA is designed to guarantee the decisional independence of ALJs. They have absolute immunity from liability for their judicial acts and are triers of fact "insulated from political influence".

@Yuuki yeah i don't see how you can call them insulated from political influence when they are directly appointed by the executive branch and don't have any sort of confirmation process at all

@GodEmperorDune And can be fired at will

@puzzlepiece87 ah right, the most important part

so literally you can fire all the administrative law judges that are in ICE but insufficiently racist

what's the weather like these days in New Zealand I wonder

buddy,,

@GodEmperorDune It's gaining traction, excellent

I think it's important we look into this no further than the claim in the tweet so my heart will explode happy

lol wtf?

It wasn't like a rumour I think the firm literally commented on what would happen if he saw jail time

sure

ok

relatively internal shit: DSA Queer Socialists WG's statement after DSA Disability WG's entire steering committee resigned

2019 convention is going to be fun

@Unionhawk hell yeah

@Unionhawk where is it going to be? chicago?

pretty sure it's in Austin