mormont

She is wrong, and especially technically. She acknowledges that latter bit herself. You may mean that the headline describing what she said isn't technically wrong, which is probably true - simply being gay or a woman is not the basis for an asylum claim. But that's not what she said. (emphasis mine). Where she's particularly wrong is this idea that the world has changed and so this means the convention is no longer fit for purpose. It's still fit for purpose and needed as much as it ever was. It's just becoming inconvenient. And we don't abandon our moral duties because they are inconvenient.

I’m not saying that, no. When you can’t win, don’t play, is my usual approach. But your last comment begs the question, in the original sense. It assumes that the problem is cowardice because your preferred answer is just to be braver. It reminds me of football fans who see a losing team and complain they’re just not trying hard enough, like nothing else could be the problem with a team of professional athletes. It’s the timeless appeal of the simple answer to a complicated question. I don’t think the Dems are cowards. I think they’re wrong about a lot of stuff, and sometimes too cautious, but caution isn’t always about courage.

If you think that, I think you have misunderstood what I was saying. I'm not at all saying that Dems should not 'get back to their roots'. I'm saying both types of criticism are insincere.

My only comment on the Fetterman thing is how it shows Dems can't win: they're criticised as 'out of touch elites' but if they show any signs of a common touch, the Republicans will swoon at the lack of decorum.

Well, that's the thing: in addition to what I've said about it, it's also funny and sweet and charming and well made. It's a better film than it has any right to be.

I'm sorry you didn't get that out of the movie, but you're wrong about this, and wrong about it being incoherent. Just my opinion, of course, but one that's widely shared. You can find whole essays about this, numerous critics have discussed it in their reviews, and Gerwig has talked about it in interviews. OK, but you're the one saying that, not me.

It's right for those officers to step back from armed duty if they have concerns that they might be vulnerable to being charged. There is a whole other question about why they might be charged and whether the charges in this case are justified. They do indeed have 'weighty responsibilities' but I might have hoped they'd have considered that before taking the job. Anyway, the latest Sunak wheeze is to float the idea of abolishing inheritance tax, an unfunded tax cut which will disproportionately benefit the better off and do nothing at all for people on benefits, renters, the low paid, etc. Who will all then be told there's no money to help them, sorry. I recall saying at the time of the Sunak/Truss leadership contest that although he was better than Truss, we should not be fooled into thinking Sunak was a moderate. He's spent the week proving me right.

I've spent a lot more than five minutes thinking about this movie, which has been very enjoyable and productive. You can switch your brain off when watching a film that has inspiration from Plato through to Milton and de Beauvior, I guess, but you're cutting yourself off from a lot of the best things about the film. But then, it's in the film's favour that it works on so many levels. ps the movie was co-written and directed by Gerwig, and she was given complete creative freedom. It's very much her vision from what I can understand, with input from her co-writer, of course, and Margot Robbie as a producer. For a major movie release, it's very much not written by committee.

Again, we've had this discussion, but the money quote if you want to know what this film is 'about' is: The film is feminist and rightly engages with the complicated relationship between Barbie and feminism and the ways in which that reflects the development of feminist thought in a patriarchal society. But that's the B plot, not the A plot. The A plot is existentialist, not feminist. The movie explicitly recognises that patriarchy is just a way of trying to take control of our lives, of hiding from existential discomfort. It's not meaningless, nor harmless, but it's a distraction just the same. Barbie chooses to live in an imperfect (and patriarchal) mortal world, over a utopia, because she believes doing so will give her existence true meaning. (The same can be said of consumerism. The film engages with it through the Mattel CEO bit, but it's a sub-plot, not the plot.) The theme of the film right from the moment Barbie blurts out 'do you guys ever think about dying?' at the party is existential dread. That's what causes her to go to the real world, kicking off the story proper. Ken's patriarchy and the Mattel stuff are just things that happen along the way. They're neither the beginning of the plot, nor the end when they're resolved. The journey of the movie is Barbie coming to terms with mortality. And the film is IMO very successful in portraying that journey. The issue is that, understandably, a lot of folk come to the theatre with ideas about what this films is going to be about, and existential dread is not one of those things. Sometimes we see what we expect to see, and it confuses our perceptions a bit.

I'm sure his defection to the Republican party is imminent. The natural home for those caught red-handed but who want to claim persecution.

Can we let the Al Franken thing go already? Yes, Menendez has done far worse. But the relevance of Al Franken's resignation to that is nil, and the comparison actually downplays the gravity of the Menendez story. Whether you think Franken should have gone or not, it's ancient history in political terms and has nothing to do with this issue.

Apparently he’s musing about charging for missed GP appointments again too. Just flailing at this point.

Again, tech companies (like all companies) make moral judgements all the time and we mostly applaud or don't care. Asking companies not to make moral judgements at all isn't practical or desirable. Their relative level of power is only an issue to the extent that they aren't accountable, and that's a whole different problem. YouTube suspended Brand's monetisation because he did break the terms of service for creators. And I hate to say this, but your employer, your university (if you're a student), your suppliers, any company you associate with are entitled to reach conclusions about whether they want to associate with you in the absence of a court decision about your guilt: and they'll usually do so on a lower standard of proof than a court would, and considering things that aren't relevant in court. This is all perfectly legal and normal. it happens every day, in fact.

All true, except: - Dinenage did not tell anyone to do anything. She noted that YouTube had demonetised Brand and asked other streaming platforms if they would be doing the same, fair enough with an implication that they should, but it was not 'telling' them to. - due process doesn't actually have to be served first. That's a legal process, and entirely separate. - it's not really a moral judgement, it's a PR and financial decision. - tech companies are perfectly entitled to take moral judgements anyway and indeed we often exhort them to when it suits us. I think it was a bit of bandwagon jumping and Dinenage shouldn't have done it, but it's a silly, inconsequential side story to this affair and not a harbinger of sinister things to come. I would regard the characterisation of the allegations about Brand as 'antics' as being the more worrying part of that clip tbqh. It's not great when we downplay this sort of behaviour as if he'd been popping balloons behind someone. ETA - 'more worrying' probably sounds stronger than I mean. But the point is, if you're a person who's been sexually assaulted, seeing it described in those terms is not going to be pleasant.

[mod] Folks, personal messages are for the personal messaging system. Don't clog up discussion threads with them. Thanks. [/mod]

Yeah, but against all that, there’s a minuscule chance Sunak might get to be Prime Minister for a bit longer. So really you have to consider both sides. there literally is nobody and nothing Rishi won’t chuck under a bus, including the economy and the planet.

Don't make me repeat myself, folks.

I think there are a number of factors that explain why the Wootton stuff hasn't had the same traction in the media. For a start, the media are markedly reluctant to go after one of their own, even if that person is odious and disliked by his colleagues. For another thing, Wootton is, no doubt about it, less famous than Brand. For a third, yes, he may have blackmail material. For a fourth, the allegations involve misuse of News International resources and that will be embarrassing for NI so that will naturally make NI outlets want to minimise the story. For a fifth, the sheer scale of what Wootton was doing is hard to wrap your head around. For a sixth, a story where the victims are teenage girls elicits more sympathy and interest from the public than one where the victims are adult men. Arguing about which singular reason explains this is the sort of pointless waste of time that personally, makes me just skip entire pages at a time. ETA - please take the personal argument about who does/doesn't use Twitter to a personal message where it belongs.

And the BBC, the Guardian, the Independent, Sky News, Evening Standard, etc. The story certainly hasn't had the blanket coverage the Brand affair is getting, and hasn't had the coverage it deserves, but 'literally nobody' is literally incorrect.

No, I'm sorry. I'm not convinced that a British comedian being accused of offences in Britain by a British newspaper has become a US Politics issue because he comments on US political issues. Keep the Brand stuff out of the thread.

That's a large part of the current scandal, actually. On the one hand, Brand seems to have made liberal use of lawyers after these previous stories to threaten consequences if the individual allegations were repeated. On the other, various media folks seem to have been very willing to overlook the allegations. Nothing ever went to court, so Brand sailed along for quite a while. At some point there seems to have been less of a willingness to overlook the rumours, possibly coinciding with a general fall in his popularity, at which time (coincidentally or not) Brand started spouting right wing talking points, somewhat at odds with his former professed politics. And that brings us to now, more or less.

Brand's 'true nature' was 'revealed' in 2006 and on several occasions since when allegations about his behaviour were published in various newspapers.

Little bit of a reach to get from what I said to this: I've been very critical of, for example, the Obi-Wan series, the Rise of Skywalker, the prequels, etc. so it's not as if being happy to have a lot of new SW content means I uncritically love it all. I do understand that some folks like the stuff I don't and that no franchise exists where every single thing released is going to be brilliant, though.

Look, there's a strike on. Disney have to have something they can label as 'new content'.