Yet another corporation feels the sting of their social media marketing disasters:
Ben & Jerry’s Insufferable Overpriced Ice Cream decided that the US needed to be destroyed on July 4. Oddly enough, the American market seemed to not think very highly of that.
u stole the milk from cows to make ur ice cream checkmate https://t.co/HCiBYMVTtl
— Ashley St. Clair (@stclairashley) July 4, 2023
As is well known by now, Disney has been making a mess of many of the properties they’re in charge of. The Marvel movies/shows have plummeted downhill; Pixar movies stink; the endless CGI “live action” remakes are soulless cash grabs at best, and to all reports that forthcoming Indiana Jones movie is gonna be *terrible.* And then there’s the smoking ruin of Star Wars. Why is this happening? To an outsider, it looks a lot like sabotage… a vast organization that wants to tear down not only its own legacy, but poison the culture as a whole. That’s crazy conspiracy theory talk, of course. But then… there’s this:
The fact that Disney – or any corporation – has not just a “diversity officer,” but a *Chief* “diversity officer” is of course a stinging indictment about their wisdom and sanity. But there’s one line in the article that jumped right out at me:
Disney HR chief Sonia Coleman’s note to staff announcing Newton’s departure … She has been dedicated to ensuring every person sees themselves and their life experiences represented in a meaningful and authentic way.
Ah. No. That’s just… NO. Bad storytelling company. Bad. BAD.
I don’t want to see myself and my life experience in *any* sort of way in any sort of movie that Disney might make. I want to see stuff that would inspire me to emulate. I don’t want to see what I am; I want to see what I can become. Once again, there are two world views:
1: “Look, Captain Kirk is on TV. I want to be like Captain Kirk.”
2: “Look, Captain Kirk is on TV. I want Captain Kirk to be like me.”
Worldview #2 is the one known as “representation.” It is cancer. It should be mocked, spat upon, driven from polite society out into the wasteland to die shriveled and alone, huddled against some broken forgotten ruin of a statue of a long unremembered tyrant. “Representation” does not inspire people to greatness; at best, it inspires smug complacency. It does not bring people together; it only divides. Because if Person A finds themselves represented by Character A who shares all the “important” weird little identity politics quirks of Person A… then Character A does *not* represent Person B who doesn’t share those quirks. Character A will only appeal to a thin slice of the audience… and then will not inspire those people to much of anything, because Character A tells them how awesome they Already Are. You don’t need to change, because you’re perfect just the way you are. (Unless, of course, you need to go on a risky series of hormone treatments and lop off your dangly bits.) And if Character A *doesn’t* share your identities, and in fact is quite different or even opposed, then you will feel outraged that someone isn’t catering to you.
So, yay for Disney getting rid of this one little symptom of the larger problem. Now get rid of the entire department, and let not the precepts of DEI ever be spoken of again.
Gropey Joe trotted out this old lie again:
Guns are the #1 killer of kids in America.
More than car accidents and more than cancer. We can't let that become just another statistic.
Let's ban AR-15-style firearms and other assault weapons.
— President Biden (@POTUS) June 16, 2023
Fortunately, the internet is full of fact checkers…
What is "Unintentional Injury" you ask?
Mostly drowning, car accidents, suffocation, fires etc. pic.twitter.com/teN3Qt83fM
— Unbiased Crime Report (@UnbiasedCrime) June 16, 2023
https://t.co/2mIF9utJ1b Using CDC data: In the most recent available census year of 2021, setting the age between 1-17 yrs old (legal minors) for all causes of death the total is: 35,654
Firearms are listed at: 2,590 or 7.26% of the total.
It was number 4 below medical causes.… pic.twitter.com/Y2zRXxbSrm— The Sicilian Irish Robot (@misteryrobozo) June 17, 2023
That lists firearms as the cause of 7.26% of child mortality in the US. But here “child” is “birth to 17.” A *lot* of those “children shot dead are in the upper age range… and were shot while committing crimes (“gang related,” no doubt). Shot by people defending themselves, shot by cops, shot by other criminals. These “victims” merit no sympathy, of course. Unfortunately, hard numbers are hard to come by, but there’s this:
Please accurately represent the numbers. It's tragic when anyone dies, but most of these "kids" dying from gun violence are older teens and it's gang-related. We need to go after the gangs. pic.twitter.com/f2L9IZcDwl
— Anonymous Because You People Are Crazy (@AnonBecauseOf) June 16, 2023
In the appendix to the Lord of the Rings, Tolkein included a short story about Helm Hammerhand, a serious badass and one man wrecking crew who lived hundreds of years before the events of LotR. A few years ago Warner Bors annlunced that they were doing an animated film about the events described in that story… and as spinoffs of lotR go, that one made sense. it’d make a fun action flick, animated or no.
But wait. There’s less.
Basically: Helm Hammerhand, main character of the story… isn’t the main character of the story. Instead, it’s a female character who was so unimportant in the story that she didn’t even merit getting *named.*
The producer, one Philippa Boyens, claims that this effectively all-new character (named Hera, because the writers are such spectacular Tolkein experts that they know that the characters in Rohan are named after Greeks, not northern Europeans) is based largely on “Æthelflæd, Lady of the Mercians and daughter of Wessex king Alfred the Great.” OK, sure, great. It’s quite possible that a movie about Æthelflæd would be a spectacular thing. So… why not make a movie about Æthelflæd? Oh, right, because it’s easier to ride the coat tails of an existing property.
Who is this for? A movie about Helm would bring in the existing fans. This thing is likely to turn a lot of them away.
Maybe something like “you get what you repeatedly vote for.” In this case, Chicago repeatedly votes for the worst possible mayors (and, sadly for the rest of the state, the worst possible Governors). And Chicago suffers for it. Will they ever vote for “the other side?” I doubt it. Not until the city collapses utterly, the population drops by 90% and the survivors are replaced.
Refuse to learn at your own peril.
Where the case is made that fandoms are composed not of people laser-focused on a single mono-topic, but who are *generally* nerdy, conversant in a range of fandoms, some related, some not, but all somewhat similar in having canon and lore and the like. The point being that when franchises and IPs are taken over by people who are *not* nerdy, they cannot relate to the fans, and end up making a mess of the product. They have fundamentally different worldviews.
The story goes: an Amazon driver delivered a package. Nobody was home, but the automated doorbell made some sort of innocuous announcement. The driver, who was wearing headphones, misheard what the robot said, decided that the robot did a racism, reported that as such to Amazon… and then the homeowner had his Amazon account locked. This included “smart home” devices, locking out some of the functionality of his house.
This story, if true, argues for several things:
1) Don’t have “smart” features that can be turned off by someone else on a whim
2) Perhaps companies should be prohibited from having this sort of authority
3) “Someone said something racist/sexist/offensive” should at the very least be accompanied by verifiable documentation of the incident before *anything* is done. False accusations should be met with punishments similar to but exceeding those that an accurate accusation would have resulted in.
Obviously they’re not going to try to arrest everyone who still has a small piece of plastic and metal that was perfectly legal when they bought or made it. They’ll go after a select tiny number, and do so very publicly, hoping to instill fear… and to instill a subconscious realization that we’re living in an anarcho-tyranny. The result of *that* will be a general erosion of respect for the rule of law and an increased acceptance of generalized criminality. That doesn’t seem like such a great thing to me, but then, I’m not in charge.
The Constitution has of course been amended numerous times before. But amendment that curtail existing right have been few and haven’t gone well.
The 28th Amendment will permanently enshrine four broadly supported gun safety principles into the U.S. Constitution:
Translation: deletion of the 2nd Amendment. The 1st Amendment will be “amended” shortly after, I suspect.
Of course, Newsom knows that this is going nowhere. An amendment must be ratified by three-fourths of the states; the map below suggests that that is unlikely at best. But these sort of announcements are always good; it’s useful to be reminded from time to time that some of our “leaders” are evil.
If Governor Newsom *actually* cared about gun crime victims, instead of making millions more citizens into criminals, he’d actually demand enforcement of existing laws, and would ensure that those arrested for any and all violent crimes would actually see justice. But that’s not what he’s doing.
Uuuuuuuhhhhhhgh.
Britain is doomed. Lack of manufacturing, wholly uncontrolled mass invasion… “Britain” will soon be relegated to the chapter of the history book filled with nations that no longer exist. But while the Soviet Union or Austro-Hungarian Empire went away, the *people* remained, as did their language and much of their culture. But England specifically and Britain as a whole? Their own government is working to erase their existence. It’s remarkable.