mormont
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Posts posted by mormont
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4 hours ago, Mr. Chatywin et al. said:
Guess all Florida Man jokes are not fair game now. Should I also get you a fainting couch?
I have never fainted at a Florida Man joke, but I’ve never laughed at one either. Cringed or rolled my eyes, yes. Laughed? No.
- Zorral, Larry of the Lawn and Week
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Moving on from the trailer for Murder In Kensington, further shabby stuff from Lindsay Hoyle today when PMQs was dominated by arguments about racist, sexist comments about Diane Abbott, but Hoyle somehow couldn't find time to allow Diane Abbott to actually speak about the subject.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-68556911
So previously he was so upset about the idea that people were allegedly threatening MPs that he abandoned tradition, but today he could not abandon tradition to allow a member to respond to a man saying she should be shot. I'm not a huge fan of Abbott (her record as a frontbencher anyway, as a backbench MP she's done some admirable things) but Hoyle is a weak Speaker who needs to go.
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1 hour ago, Larry of the Lawn said:
I think tiktok rots brains
Like TV, or rock'n'roll, or novels?
Kids today.
1 hour ago, maarsen said:The old "I'm so stupid I hired stupid lawyers" defense.
It's not even that, since he's not going to be specific about what the lawyers said/did. The defence appears to be just vibes. Lawyers had been involved, so I had the feeling that it was all legit.
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Next in the 'novel legal theories tried by Donald Trump':
In the New York hush money trial, Trump intends to rely on an 'advice of counsel' defence. But he won't be waiving privilege, because it's not a formal 'advice of counsel' defence, so he won't telling us what his counsel actually advised. Instead, he'll be advancing the argument, and I kid not, that he
Quote“lacked the requisite intent to commit the conduct charged in the Indictment because of his awareness that various lawyers were involved in the underlying conduct giving rise to the charges”
So it's actually a 'general sense that counsel of some sort were involved at some point' defence. If a lawyer has been involved in any way, you naturally assume everything that follows is entirely legal, without question. Due diligence completed. What's the problem?
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10 hours ago, The Anti-Targ said:
I'm all for simplified pronunciation for things like Worcestershire to wooster, plenty of letters and syllables missing but at least the order of sounds that remain is the same. But how do you get the M and L backwards going from Cholmondeley to Chumley?
The remnant L there is the second L, not the first, so it's not backward. 'Cholmond' becomes 'Chum', -ley remains. Ch(u)'m'ley. So it is sort of a simplified pronounciation.
11 minutes ago, Heartofice said:Off the back of UK Oscar success, we should remind ourselves that the real disparity when it comes to representation in the arts is class.
Nearly half of UK award nominees in last decade were privately educated
It's surprising that number is so low to be honest. Not only are the arts riddled with Nepo-Babies, but in order to get anywhere you basically need to know the right people, have gone to the right school, and have a shit ton of cash to allow you to basically not do a proper job for your early career. Plus you need a plummy posh accent too.
Not unlike several other industries, e.g. finance, journalism, politics.
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On 3/10/2024 at 10:10 AM, Heartofice said:
Watched Poor Things . Maybe it was just under the wrong circumstances as was with the other half but it wasn’t really all that enjoyable and was a bit disappointed.
On one hand I loved the aesthetic and the creativity and some of the humour, the performances. On the other hand it went out of its way to make me feel uncomfortable and a bit unpleasant.
Well, yeah. It's a film whose themes include the infantilisation of women in society, how that enables their exploitation, and whether humanity is bestial at heart. It clearly intends to make the viewer feel uncomfortable (so job done). If anything, the film can be (and has been) criticised for not going far enough in that respect.
I also watched it on Saturday and as a big fan of the original novel, felt it was a pretty good adaptation. I was slightly cautious going in because I knew it had dropped certain aspects of the original. But it's actually very strong. The steampunk aesthetic is an addition, but it serves the same role as Gray's illustrations in the novel, lending a sense of fantasy that's important to the tone. (The novel has an epilogue where Bella explains that the entire story of her being an infant brain transplanted into an adult body is an obvious fantasy of her imaginative and frivolous husband, who has read too much Gothic fiction). The setting is moved from Glasgow to London but that barely matters in the end.
Mark Ruffalo is amazing in this, as is Willem Dafoe, and obviously Emma Stone. It has some issues, but overall I'd recommend it to anyone.
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10 hours ago, Centrist Simon Steele said:
I'm worried about the youth vote as they are particularly angry about Israel and Palestine. My son is 19--he's intelligent, thoughtful, kind--but when I try to talk to him about why voting for Biden is infinitely better for Palestine than Trump would be, he just can't accept it. I think a lot of young voters are in that conundrum.
Biden's best weapon on this is going to be any time Trump talks about the issue. Trump loves some 'strong man' rhetoric and he's going to say more along the lines of his 'finish the issue' comments.
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1 hour ago, Centrist Simon Steele said:
At some point this whole, "let's get past this one more election" wears thin for voters the democrats need. I think the same advice applies to them (the old-school liberal leadership): "you want to cling to your power and corruption, but you're going to have to let it go before Trump gets elected again."
Not picking on Simon but this, for me, sums up the problem.
There is no division here. 'The voters the Democrats need' makes it sound like these voters are passive, an unshaped mass that is separate to the party and therefore not part of the solution. That's flat wrong.
Those voters are part of 'the Democrats'. If they don't like their choices, they need to change them. Policies, candidates, processes. Starting tomorrow and continuing for years to come.
If 'the voters the Democrats need' are sitting waiting for 'the Democrats' to give them what they want, they're part of the problem as much as the party higher-ups are.
Trump is vile, but he has power because he inspired a lot of his voters to get involved in the Republican party at lower levels. But it is not up to the higher levels of the Democrat party to go out and find a unique individual who can do the same. That's like asking them to come up with magic beans. The boring truth of the matter is that the party can't (not won't) do better until the voters do the work.
And it's way too late to do that now. The candidates in this election are already picked. If you think there's any way to ditch Biden that's not an electoral catastrophe, you're kidding yourself. But you can get involved now if you want to see a better candidate in 2028, or 2032. If you don't change things, you can't expect change.
- horangi, DanteGabriel, DMC and 9 others
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I do love What We Do In The Shadows but the latest season does feel like they've run out of road. I believe the next is the last?
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If we're doing a general sitcom discussion, I will offer my personal spicy take, which is:
Fawlty Towers has aged badly and has more problems than you remember. (For one, nearly everything Basil says about Manuel is shown to be objectively true.) If you want to watch a classic British sitcom that does the 'pompous unlikeable lead who is the author of his own misfortunes, but at the same time put upon by the world in general', watch Rising Damp. It helps that Leonard Rossiter was easily twice the comic actor that John Cleese is. And that's no slam on Cleese: Rossiter was simply unbelievably good.
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I think it is actually a 'reasonable person' standard in these cases, and while they can be complicated, judges do have published guidance and pre-established case law to guide them. Most things judges deal with are complicated, one way or the other.
Anyway, passing aside the Hunt budget (steal all Labour's fundraising ideas and spend the cash on tax cuts - and people wonder why opposition parties don't set out their policies in detail before an election?), the Tories are running into the inevitable issues with trying to be the most free speech and also the most hype against 'extremism'.
QuoteDowning Street is facing a backlash from Conservative MPs and peers over moves to create a broader of definition of extremism in response to what Rishi Sunak describes as the threat of “mob rule”.
Michael Gove, the communities secretary, is expected to unveil plans next week that would allow the government, universities and local authorities to cut off links to groups identified as “extremist”.
Miriam Cates is obviously someone with whom I have quite a serious difference of views on most topics, but she at least sees the problem:
QuoteThe rightwing Tory MP Miriam Cates and Lord Frost, the high-profile rightwing peer, are among those who have expressed opposition amid concerns that the move could have an inadvertent impact on anti-abortion groups, advocates for socially conservative causes and those opposed to transgender rights.
“Any attempt to define extremism or fundamental British values is very risky because one person’s extremism is another person’s sincerely held and lawful belief,” Cates told the Guardian.
“An obvious is example is where I regularly call trans rights activists extremists for believing a man can be a woman just because he says he is, and that this gives him the right to enter women-only spaces, but equally I am called an extremist for believing there are only two biological sexes and that you can’t change sex.”
“These are debates that we should be able to have lawfully in society. We should be able to call each other extremists, but it also means those views should not be banned,” said the MP, one of the leaders of the New Conservatives grouping of Tory MPs.
But the Tories need something to campaign on, so they're going to try to ride these two horses at once. And civic groups will be asked, again, to do two contradictory things - uphold the right to free speech, but also not engage with anyone who says perfectly legal things that the government has decided are objectionable. Under threat of punishment for being unable to square that circle. It's madness.
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So here's a little story.
Michelle Donelan, currently Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology, alleged on Twitter that two members of the EDI board of UK Research and Innovation were radical extremists who had expressed sympathy for Hamas in the aftermath of the October 7 attacks. She publicly suggested they should be removed from their roles.
After a lengthy and detailed investigation, it turns out that she was talking complete bollocks, had not done any checking of the claim but had simply accepted and repeated it at face value, and had seriously defamed both these women.
She has now retracted her comments in the face of a libel suit, and paid compensation.
Wait. No. We paid compensation. The taxpayer paid it.
Tomorrow, the Chancellor will complain about wasteful public spending.
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2 hours ago, Jaxom 1974 said:
Interesting. Because that's exactly how I feel about Friends. As mentioned above, Friends was one of the whitest of white shows and had an air of its own superiority about it. I never could understand how they were actually Friends.
Nobody else would hang out with them.
You know all those people you see in the apartment when they throw a party, who never show up or are referred to ever again? Those are the folks the cast want to be friends with. But those folks can't stand them. They only show up to their parties to get free drinks. So the cast only have each other to hang out with.
That's my headcanon anyway.
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Quote
The Tories hit rock bottom today with support for their party across Britain falling to a record low of just 20 per cent, according to a new poll.
https://www.standard.co.uk/news/politics/tories-general-election-labour-nhs-cost-poll-b1142977.html
QuoteThe state of public services more generally could be a real Achilles heel for the Conservatives at the coming election. 78% told us last year that public services had got worse in the last 5 years.
In today’s poll the public think that Labour has the best policies over the Conservatives ‘for public services generally’ by an almost 4 to 1 margin. Perhaps this why the Conservatives would rather not talk about them – but at some point they will need to.
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1 minute ago, DMC said:
Yeah but you're no true Scotsman.
My kilt wearing habits are not the issue here
- DMC, IlyaP and Ser Scot A Ellison
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For the record, again, I’m British and I find the idea that nobody on this side of the pond knew or cared that the Gellers were Jewish to be weird. I guess it’s possible that folks had never knowingly met a Jewish person or watched any sitcom or film set in New York before?
ps no less a source than the Friends fandom wiki:
https://friends.fandom.com/wiki/Ross_Geller
QuoteDespite being financially secure, Ross is notoriously cheap.
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/AllJewsAreCheapskatesQuoteRoss Geller from Friends. At times also his sister, Monica, as in "The One Where Rosita Dies" where Phoebe Buffay refers to the Geller siblings as "the worst tippers in the world" after having them as massage clients.
An academic citation!
https://eloncdn.blob.core.windows.net/eu3/sites/153/2018/12/04-Maoz.pdf
QuoteA second stereotype is that of the cheap Jew […] while Ross makes a good wage as a palaeontologist at a museum, he still displays moments of the stereotypical cheap Jew
And yeah I did waste my time actually looking this up!
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19 minutes ago, BigFatCoward said:
And that's irrelevant to my point, the Jewish references would be lost for the overwhelming majority of the UK. Cos most people don't give a shit
Which is in turn irrelevant to DMC’s point. If the writers, who certainly knew the characters were Jewish, wrote them in a way that evoked negative stereotypes arbour Jewish folks, it’s not a defence to say ‘I missed that and I think others would have missed it too’. It’s still there.
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32 minutes ago, BigFatCoward said:
If you asked 100 people in the UK what religion the gellers were, your average response would be I have no idea/who cares.
It's not just their religion, and I'm fairly sure you're wrong. If it wasn't already clear, it's referenced repeatedly in the series.
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2 hours ago, DMC said:
Whereas with Phoebe, Rachel had no problem living with her - and nor did Monica based on the flashback episodes - and the change was just due to circumstances.
Again, canonically Phoebe couldn't stand living with Monica.
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8 minutes ago, DMC said:
Rachel moved in with Phoebe at the beginning of season six when Monica and Chandler moved in together. This mostly went without incident until the end of the season, where in which there was a fire in Phoebe and Rachel's apartment that led to the latter moving in with Joey. Also, of course, Phoebe was Monica's roommate immediately before the timeline of the show.
I wouldn't count that as justifying the original comment, particularly as the whole reason Phoebe moved out of Monica's place was that she couldn't tolerate living with Monica, but sure, for a small period compared to the whole run, Rachel lived with Phoebe.
QuoteAs for the Phoebe "theory," I hadn't heard that one before. It's pretty entertaining to think about -- especially imagining the flashbacks of her having conversations in Central Perk with herself.
It's one of those dumb faux-deep sitcom 'theories' but yes, fun to think about!
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2 hours ago, DMC said:
The three women also live with each other throughout the show.
They did not. Phoebe mostly lived alone. This is a big part of the Phoebe theory, that the whole series is her fantasy of being friends with these folks she sees in the Central Perk. Also it's the apogee of the 'how the hell did these people afford to live in New York?'
ETA - although on the latter point, I forgot she was subletting from her grandma and later inherited the place.
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7 hours ago, DMC said:
The internet's been over this, but Ross sucks hard. Not only is he an apparently absentee father, but also horrifically and admittedly bad at his job, of course just generally boring, and most importantly for the show - a pretty shitty friend.
They're all pretty shitty friends, and pretty shitty people tbqh. But that's a sitcom problem. You need conflict to drive plot. If they were all really good friends, there would be no storylines.
Still, I wouldn't want to hang with any of them.
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Could we perhaps return to discussing UK Politics?
Ukraine War: incompetence vs fecklessness
in General Chatter
Posted
‘In no sense a conservative’? I reject that. He’s not an economic conservative, but Putin is unquestionably a social, political, cultural, national and religious conservative. There are more senses in which he is a conservative than not.