DL Open Thread: Monday, May 20, 2019
This looks promising…a grassroots progressive movement in West Virginia. That successful teacher’s strike may well be bearing fruit.
Solution to High-Tech Ransomware? Pay the kidnappers and charge the customers. Doesn’t exactly fill me with confidence.
Dog Bites Man: Faux News Hosts Make Big Bucks Speaking At GOP Events.
My Kind Of NFL Player Retires. Thank you, Chris Long.
Two Obsessives Talk About the End Of Game Of Thrones. Me? I never saw a minute of it. My wife never missed a minute of it.
What do you want to talk about?
That WV story is awesome:
To all of that, I say “HELL YES!”
West Virginians have consistently voted against their own best interests for two decades now. That teachers strike seems to have mobilized some real grassroots progressivism.
I’m all for it for another reason–if successful, we may reach the point where we won’t have to hold our collective breath as to whether (when?) Joe Manchin will flip.
Sports Illustrated on Chris Long:
“1. Happy trails to Chris Long, who was as interesting a guy as you’ll find in the NFL. He’s Howie Long’s son. He went to Thomas Jefferson’s school. He was the second pick in the draft. He played a long time for a sad-sack team in a small market. He got dumped by that team a few weeks after it announced its move to L.A. The next year, he won a Super Bowl with the era’s greatest dynasty, then came back the year after with another team to beat that dynasty and win another title. He climbed Mount Kilimanjaro in the offseason to raise money for clean water in Africa. He’s been at times the only white face in the NFL players’ fight for social justice reform. He was a four-time Pro Bowl alternate but never played in the game. And his last honor as NFL player came after his final game, when he was named the NFL’ Walter Payton Man of the Year in February. That, I’d say, is a lot for a guy who just turned 34. Ex-NFL linebacker James Laurinaitis, who came into the league a year after Long, played seven years with him, captained the Rams defense with him, and wound up cut on the same 2016 day as him, texted me this on his buddy Sunday: “It was such an honor to share the huddle with Chris. Such a great teammate, a ball-buster, but a guy who approached the game the right way. Never questioned his heart. His willingness to face the noise when things were rough in St. Louis set a great example for me to do the same. It was with great joy I got to see him raise two Lombardis, but greater joy to see him do the things with waterboys and the youth education initiative that he’s done. He’s done much more away from what the public is aware of, and it’s because of his heart to use his platform for the betterment of everyone else that makes it an honor to call him a friend. Cheers to a hell of a career.” And here’s hoping Chris makes his next 34 just as unique as his first 34.”
Justice has created an empire in WV, from mining to Greenbrier. He’s created a lot of jobs for people. The problem is, they are his serfs and he just giving them the scraps from his table. The bigger problem is, they don’t know it, which is why they vote against their own interests.
I found a decent, non-scientific, article on why they do that: https://www.forbes.com/sites/brucelee/2016/11/08/heres-why-you-may-vote-against-yourself/#106179ef25fa
I do wish Democrats were better at understanding the phenomenon and worked towards some mitigation of the behavior. My view is that not enough is done to personalize the issues for them.
Yeah, I think that’s why I find this movement promising. When you talk about personalizing the issues for them, it’s the ‘thems’ who are stepping up to run that could make a difference.
Fuck all police:
https://mobile.twitter.com/Ciindy_Dasilva/status/1130229305085239296
Fuck all police:
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2019/05/20/video-police-punched-restrained-man-face-dover-new-jersey/3739581002/
Today would gave been Michael Brown’s 23rd birthday.
Re: Game of Thrones. I never watched a moment of it either, just as I never read the books, a mishmash of ideas swiped from more original authors.
George R.R. Martin used to be an actual science fiction author, but like others before him he realized he could make a lot more money if he wrote about dragons instead. (Even the dragons as human-commanded livestock in a medieval setting is a stolen idea, from Jack Vance.)
Most prominently, Brian Aldiss’ “Helliconia” trilogy takes place on a world where each season lasts hundreds of years; the coming of winter is the hinge on which much of the action depends. Martin mixed that with the usual medieval sword-and-sorcery trappings so common in the wake of the Tolkien boom of the ’60s and wove it around a soap-opera version of the power struggles among Italian city-states of the late medieval-early Renaissance period, just as Frank Herbert’s “Dune” was a gussied-up history of early Islam.
So I skipped the TV series as well. Was it any good?
“a mishmash of ideas swiped from more original authors.”
Yeah and Noah’s Flood was lifted from the Epic of Atrahasis which got the story from the Epic of Gilgamesh, which came from a very old pre-written word tale passed down through oral transmission. So yep, nothing new under the sun. Maybe every story has been told already with only scenery and time differences.
Even so, Martin’s saga, was a tapestry of political and power dynamics with a wide cast of characters from which nearly everyone could find one with whom they could identify and root for. In that, it was very entertaining. The show replicated much of that richness within necessary budget restrictions. In short, it was a fun and entertaining romp, which also created a host of fans who are annoyed at the author for not being secluded in a padded cell in order to finish the last two books.
Yeah, right. I don’t know how much science fiction you read, but any half-decent sci-fi story has original ideas in it. If it doesn’t, it, well, sucks. Stories with large casts of characters are, generally speaking, soap operas. I mean, “General Hospital” has a large cast of characters, and at least they’re all human beings with normal human capacities. And in its heyday, its popularity far surpassed this grade-B spectacle. But I get it, the gratuitous kinky sex made the whole thing worthwhile, amirite?
If you want ideas, check out the works I cited. All are superior to Martin’s twaddle. If you want soap opera, well … I get the low common denominator involved, but it’s pretty funny/dispiriting to see all the pixels illuminated by viewers trying to suss out the motivations of imaginary fucking characters as if they had been created by Shakespeare.
One original item I should note, however: This was the rare medieval-level society in which humanity has discovered the hairbrush.
“the gratuitous kinky sex made the whole thing worthwhile, amirite”
No, at least not in my case. It is was the power dynamics I found entertaining. I mean porn is free on the internet, why would I need an HBO subscription?
Still, I’ll check out Helliconia. I don’t recall having read it and I enjoy trilogies because they allow for greater exposition of the worlds, the people, and the culture.
I didn’t really think so, actually. Just being snarky after having to bite my tongue for as long as that series has been on.
My reaction is, to a large extent, based on the fact that Hollywood can’t seem to conceive of a plot that doesn’t involve ghosts, superheroes or dragons in the CGI era. I automatically reject any such entertainment, even franchises I once enjoyed, because it’s such a lazy way of creating fiction.
The Helliconia series, like most SF, isn’t as character-driven as GOT. It’s mostly interested in examining the effect of 600-year seasons and looming climate change — something GOT seems only to have hinted at with its “Winter is Coming” slogan rather than followed through on.
For a much shorter time commitment, check out Vance’s novella “The Dragon Masters,” which won a Hugo Award in 1963. Still the most interesting treatment of dragons I’ve ever seen.
WTF is Game of Thrones all about? I haven’t watched a single episode. Nor have I been interested enough to read anything about it, in print or online.
I read that. It’s a good read but not my thing. I’m an investment reader and most novellas are standalone stories which get me to the point of investment and then they end. If it’s not an integrated series or doesn’t have 500+ pages it’s difficult for me to enjoy. The exception are stories like Stephen King’s 1922 or The Long Walk, where you know, but don’t know what’s coming, and there are no heroes per se.
A fifth child dies in our custody!
https://www-m.cnn.com/2019/05/20/politics/migrant-child-dies-in-government-custody/index.html?r=https%3A%2F%2Ft.co%2Fqgjr01bzp3
Have we done a coup in Guatemala?
Yes!
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1954_Guatemalan_coup_d'%C3%A9tat