I would write a story about a future taking place decades after science got hijacked and turned into a religion by liberals, who were determined to turn science into a religious/social instrument to promote their own anti-capitalist social agenda. The story would be set in a prison for the people who questioned this social agenda, and who were arrested and charged with social crimes. The protagonist is serving time for science denial and improper use of scientific data without government approval. He is serving his time alongside other social criminals charged with racism, misogyny, hate-thinking, harassment of protected classes, and carnivorism.
I'm not saying the methodology doesn't help. I'm saying that the claims of such a radical improvement in such a short period of time are highly suspicious. And, as for her claims of a 92% graduation rate and 100% college or career placement--well, I'm straight-up throwing the bullshit flag on those claims.
We all want to believe the story of an underdog with a clever idea and some gumption who comes in and quick-fixes a struggling school. But in the real world, change usually takes hard work over a long time. People who claim they've discovered a short-cut to success are almost always full of shit.
They love these. Then ten years later, all the facts come out, and the "miracle" turns out to be fake.
Yeah, much as I would love to believe this story to be true (so everyone else could then learn from it), really dramatic increases in test scores from year to year are usually the result of some sort of cheating or cooking the numbers. In real life, there are no quick fixes for education. It takes hard work over the long haul. If the test scores jump drastically in a single year or two, that usually just means something fishy is going on.
I would also seriously question her claims of "a 92 percent 4-year graduation rate, and a 100 percent college and career placement rate." Even the best public schools in the country don't have those kinds of numbers. There is no way she has that in some inner-city school in a poor neighborhood unless she is seriously fudging the numbers or playing with the language.
The sad thing about it is that the "token black guy" actually had the potential to be one of the most interesting characters in the movie. But the movie is so focused on the fan service, big action scenes, and crazy fast plot that they completely missed the opportunity to develop his character. He had a great premise, "Stormtrooper has change of heart, finds his humanity." But then he spends the whole movie just running, fighting, and looking vaguely confused. He's so paper-thin that he may as well have stayed an anonymous stormtrooper (he would have gotten about as much meaningful dialogue either way). The poor bastard doesn't even have a chance to catch his breath long enough to even explain in his own words why he chose to defect from the New Order in the first place.
Yeah, that's what disappointed me the most, just how BORING it was. For all the FX setpieces and explosions, it was, at its core, boring as fuck.
Maybe if Abrams had slowed down the breakneck plot long enough to make the characters more relatable or believable it would have helped. It may be the kind of movie that really benefits from a 4-hour Director's Cut that explains why these characters actually give a shit about each other. As it is, it goes from "I don't know you" to "We're running...and some more running...and yet more running" to "I would risk my life to save you" so quickly that I'm wondering if 90% of the original script wasn't cut out to make room for more cool action scenes.
I want to reiterate that agreeing with Lucas on anything leaves a nasty taste in my mouth. But I'll give him this, those prequels were hit or miss (RoTS-hit, AoTC-slight miss, TPM-didn't even hit the backstop behind the target), but at least he attempted in them to create a new universe with its own distinctive look that we hadn't seen before.
The Force Awakens, by contrast, looks like it was made by someone raiding old Star Wars sets and randomly assembling parts from the old scripts. And here I thought Superman Returns overdid it in its creepy level of homage to Donner's original. J.J. Abrams made Bryan Singer look gutsy by comparison.
There was way too much slovenly fan service in that movie. As I expected with a Disney movie, it played it totally safe and took no chances. It looked test-marketed to within an inch of its life.
A real filmmaker would have made his own film, not just remade someone else's.
Does the EU even have enough troops to protect something that massive in such an unstable region? Nine million square kilometers and surrounded by notoriously unstable countries with weak governments? Without a WWII-sized massive military force to protect it, every tinpot mercenary leader and dictator will be demanding perpetual extortion not to sabotage it.
Not unless you're also going to build the unprecedentedly massive infrastructure needed to distribute that power across the world, and pay for the huge army that will be needed to protect it from sabotage, invasion, or attack.
Oh, and FUCK YOU right back, kid--for co-opting the liberal movement that I used to stand with and turning it into something just as oppressive and mean-spirited as the right-wing assholes who used to throw rocks at us. Thanks for taking a movement about equality and decency and turning it into a movement that just reversed who's doing the oppressing.
It deeply saddens me that so many people still have no idea what the right to free speech actually protects you from....
Well, I can tell you that it sure used to not protect us against employers firing us for exercising our free speech rights, or from persecution by the local community for supporting civil rights, or from being arrested on false charges for attending a civil rights rally. We had to fight hard to get those kinds of protections--some with new laws, some with court cases, some with social changes.
Now this new generation is trying to reverse all that work, saying it's okay to persecute--just as long as it's *US* doing the persecuting. That is NOT what I fought for. I didn't march for the right just to flip the fucking tables and persecute the right instead of the left. That just makes *US* the assholes now.
Haha so boycotts and legal, nonviolent shunning are the same as racially-motivated violence to you?
Trying to get people fired from their jobs, kicked out of universities, and even arrested goes way beyond a little civilized disagreement, and well into "persecution."
again suggesting that you should have special protection from the consequences of this speech - just like we protect people from racial discrimination.
Yes, that is ABSOLUTELY what I'm saying (if by "consequences" you mean "persecution"). I'm not sure what country you're from. But in the United States we do, in fact, have clear protections in both cases. Both the right to free speech and protection from racial discrimination are considered "civil rights" that all U.S. citizens enjoy (along with freedom of religion, freedom to assemble and many others).
again suggesting that you should have special protection from the consequences of this speech
Should a conservative be able to tell his or her employees that there will be "consequences" if any of them ever publicly supports any pro-homosexual cause? It's a private company so they don't deserve any special protection from "consequences," right? Something like: "You know, you boys are technically free to support those evil faggots trying to take our way of life away all you want--just so long as you understand there are going to be, you know, consequences...You boys understand that, right, that if you ever speak up for those queers there will be some consequences?" Some people (like me) might call that a case of an employer threatening his employees with persecution for exercising their right of free speech. But I guess a wise man like YOU recognizes that he's just warning his employees that there will be consequences for exercising certain forms of free speech.
But opinions are not like ethnicity.
Again, yeah they are. Both are important protected civil rights in the United States.
You can safely change them or keep them private.
LOL, so you're seriously arguing that we should be able to persecute anyone we want to for anything they can CHANGE? "Hey, I don't like the political party you're in asshole! Change it now or I'm going to get you fired from your job!!" Bloody hell!
What Social Injustice Enthusiasts call "SJWs" are not actually some cabal of activists, but an anthropomorphism of the societal consequences that free speech may carry. Social Injustice Enthusiasts want special immunity from these consequences.
Wow, that is the most polite, erudite justification for the active persecution of dissenters that I've ever seen.
That would have been really useful back in the 1960's, when certain people were also learning that free speech has consequences. "What civil rights activists call "racists" are not actually some cabal of activists, but an anthropomorphism of the societal consequences that free speech may carry. Civil rights activists want special immunity from these consequences." Man that sounds so much better and more civilized than "If those niggers try one of their commie sit-ins in this town, we're going to string them up from the trees." Those Citizen Councils would have been well-served to have you on-board as a writer.
A strawman is fictional. Let's see how long it takes for the usual-suspect feminists/race-hustlers/professional-victims to start using this rule to get their critics banned from, or censored on, Twitter.
If this never happens, I'll happily concede your point that it was just a strawman and will gladly rejoice that this rule was only used against the most vile terrorists, and not to promote a radical leftist ideology.
When you talked about kicking people out of college on a thread about twitter going too far on social justice you have performed a new sort of Godwin.
Well, I guess we'll see, won't we? But I'd be willing to bet that some of the same prominent voices on the far-left calling for people to be fired from their jobs, thrown off campus, etc. for not toeing the leftist line will be the same ones calling for Twitter users who don't toe the leftist line to be banned as well. Seems a pretty logical extension of an already existing, organized, and very vocal movement.
That might be true if the increasingly dominant radical-leftist ideology didn't define include "expressing a dissenting opinion" as *itself* a threatening act. Oh, excuse me, to use their language "creating a hostile environment."
I wish you were exaggerating. But there are leftist thinkers out there who have gone so far off into la-la-land as to think a statement like "I'm proud to be a Christian" is a statement of religious hatred (since they believe it implies that no one should be proud to be a Jew, Muslim, atheist, etc.). And those thinkers aren't even considered that radical anymore, especially on college campuses (and not just Berkley, mind you, we're talking state colleges in even some of the most conservative states).
It deeply saddens me to see that the liberal movement that I once supported is now actively arguing against the very right to free speech that we used to champion.
You're using the very same arguments that the far-right used to use to try to silence us. The "There are some people who citizens simply shouldn't be allowed to criticize" argument is the very same one we used to hear when we criticized the President or the government.
lol sjw are bad because i saw it on an internet forum
No, SJW's are bad because they get people kicked out their colleges, fired from their jobs, and even imprisoned simply for expressing opinions that disagree with their own radical ideology.
Slashdot Mirror
The populace responded.
Don't need me no specialty tapes.
I would write a story about a future taking place decades after science got hijacked and turned into a religion by liberals, who were determined to turn science into a religious/social instrument to promote their own anti-capitalist social agenda. The story would be set in a prison for the people who questioned this social agenda, and who were arrested and charged with social crimes. The protagonist is serving time for science denial and improper use of scientific data without government approval. He is serving his time alongside other social criminals charged with racism, misogyny, hate-thinking, harassment of protected classes, and carnivorism.
The press was even more stupid for not asking for proof of such extraordinary claims.
I'm not saying the methodology doesn't help. I'm saying that the claims of such a radical improvement in such a short period of time are highly suspicious. And, as for her claims of a 92% graduation rate and 100% college or career placement--well, I'm straight-up throwing the bullshit flag on those claims.
We all want to believe the story of an underdog with a clever idea and some gumption who comes in and quick-fixes a struggling school. But in the real world, change usually takes hard work over a long time. People who claim they've discovered a short-cut to success are almost always full of shit.
They love these. Then ten years later, all the facts come out, and the "miracle" turns out to be fake.
Yeah, much as I would love to believe this story to be true (so everyone else could then learn from it), really dramatic increases in test scores from year to year are usually the result of some sort of cheating or cooking the numbers. In real life, there are no quick fixes for education. It takes hard work over the long haul. If the test scores jump drastically in a single year or two, that usually just means something fishy is going on.
I would also seriously question her claims of "a 92 percent 4-year graduation rate, and a 100 percent college and career placement rate." Even the best public schools in the country don't have those kinds of numbers. There is no way she has that in some inner-city school in a poor neighborhood unless she is seriously fudging the numbers or playing with the language.
Turns out he's not so lucky after all.
The sad thing about it is that the "token black guy" actually had the potential to be one of the most interesting characters in the movie. But the movie is so focused on the fan service, big action scenes, and crazy fast plot that they completely missed the opportunity to develop his character. He had a great premise, "Stormtrooper has change of heart, finds his humanity." But then he spends the whole movie just running, fighting, and looking vaguely confused. He's so paper-thin that he may as well have stayed an anonymous stormtrooper (he would have gotten about as much meaningful dialogue either way). The poor bastard doesn't even have a chance to catch his breath long enough to even explain in his own words why he chose to defect from the New Order in the first place.
it was a very 'safe' boring movie
Yeah, that's what disappointed me the most, just how BORING it was. For all the FX setpieces and explosions, it was, at its core, boring as fuck.
Maybe if Abrams had slowed down the breakneck plot long enough to make the characters more relatable or believable it would have helped. It may be the kind of movie that really benefits from a 4-hour Director's Cut that explains why these characters actually give a shit about each other. As it is, it goes from "I don't know you" to "We're running...and some more running...and yet more running" to "I would risk my life to save you" so quickly that I'm wondering if 90% of the original script wasn't cut out to make room for more cool action scenes.
I want to reiterate that agreeing with Lucas on anything leaves a nasty taste in my mouth. But I'll give him this, those prequels were hit or miss (RoTS-hit, AoTC-slight miss, TPM-didn't even hit the backstop behind the target), but at least he attempted in them to create a new universe with its own distinctive look that we hadn't seen before.
The Force Awakens, by contrast, looks like it was made by someone raiding old Star Wars sets and randomly assembling parts from the old scripts. And here I thought Superman Returns overdid it in its creepy level of homage to Donner's original. J.J. Abrams made Bryan Singer look gutsy by comparison.
I agree with him.
There was way too much slovenly fan service in that movie. As I expected with a Disney movie, it played it totally safe and took no chances. It looked test-marketed to within an inch of its life.
A real filmmaker would have made his own film, not just remade someone else's.
Does the EU even have enough troops to protect something that massive in such an unstable region? Nine million square kilometers and surrounded by notoriously unstable countries with weak governments? Without a WWII-sized massive military force to protect it, every tinpot mercenary leader and dictator will be demanding perpetual extortion not to sabotage it.
Not unless you're also going to build the unprecedentedly massive infrastructure needed to distribute that power across the world, and pay for the huge army that will be needed to protect it from sabotage, invasion, or attack.
Oh, and FUCK YOU right back, kid--for co-opting the liberal movement that I used to stand with and turning it into something just as oppressive and mean-spirited as the right-wing assholes who used to throw rocks at us. Thanks for taking a movement about equality and decency and turning it into a movement that just reversed who's doing the oppressing.
It deeply saddens me that so many people still have no idea what the right to free speech actually protects you from....
Well, I can tell you that it sure used to not protect us against employers firing us for exercising our free speech rights, or from persecution by the local community for supporting civil rights, or from being arrested on false charges for attending a civil rights rally. We had to fight hard to get those kinds of protections--some with new laws, some with court cases, some with social changes.
Now this new generation is trying to reverse all that work, saying it's okay to persecute--just as long as it's *US* doing the persecuting. That is NOT what I fought for. I didn't march for the right just to flip the fucking tables and persecute the right instead of the left. That just makes *US* the assholes now.
Haha so boycotts and legal, nonviolent shunning are the same as racially-motivated violence to you?
Trying to get people fired from their jobs, kicked out of universities, and even arrested goes way beyond a little civilized disagreement, and well into "persecution."
again suggesting that you should have special protection from the consequences of this speech - just like we protect people from racial discrimination.
Yes, that is ABSOLUTELY what I'm saying (if by "consequences" you mean "persecution"). I'm not sure what country you're from. But in the United States we do, in fact, have clear protections in both cases. Both the right to free speech and protection from racial discrimination are considered "civil rights" that all U.S. citizens enjoy (along with freedom of religion, freedom to assemble and many others).
again suggesting that you should have special protection from the consequences of this speech
Should a conservative be able to tell his or her employees that there will be "consequences" if any of them ever publicly supports any pro-homosexual cause? It's a private company so they don't deserve any special protection from "consequences," right? Something like: "You know, you boys are technically free to support those evil faggots trying to take our way of life away all you want--just so long as you understand there are going to be, you know, consequences...You boys understand that, right, that if you ever speak up for those queers there will be some consequences?" Some people (like me) might call that a case of an employer threatening his employees with persecution for exercising their right of free speech. But I guess a wise man like YOU recognizes that he's just warning his employees that there will be consequences for exercising certain forms of free speech.
But opinions are not like ethnicity.
Again, yeah they are. Both are important protected civil rights in the United States.
You can safely change them or keep them private.
LOL, so you're seriously arguing that we should be able to persecute anyone we want to for anything they can CHANGE? "Hey, I don't like the political party you're in asshole! Change it now or I'm going to get you fired from your job!!" Bloody hell!
"Free speech is lovely, and so are its consequences."
--Every Oppressive Dictator Ever
What Social Injustice Enthusiasts call "SJWs" are not actually some cabal of activists, but an anthropomorphism of the societal consequences that free speech may carry. Social Injustice Enthusiasts want special immunity from these consequences.
Wow, that is the most polite, erudite justification for the active persecution of dissenters that I've ever seen.
That would have been really useful back in the 1960's, when certain people were also learning that free speech has consequences. "What civil rights activists call "racists" are not actually some cabal of activists, but an anthropomorphism of the societal consequences that free speech may carry. Civil rights activists want special immunity from these consequences." Man that sounds so much better and more civilized than "If those niggers try one of their commie sit-ins in this town, we're going to string them up from the trees." Those Citizen Councils would have been well-served to have you on-board as a writer.
A strawman is fictional. Let's see how long it takes for the usual-suspect feminists/race-hustlers/professional-victims to start using this rule to get their critics banned from, or censored on, Twitter.
If this never happens, I'll happily concede your point that it was just a strawman and will gladly rejoice that this rule was only used against the most vile terrorists, and not to promote a radical leftist ideology.
When you talked about kicking people out of college on a thread about twitter going too far on social justice you have performed a new sort of Godwin.
Well, I guess we'll see, won't we? But I'd be willing to bet that some of the same prominent voices on the far-left calling for people to be fired from their jobs, thrown off campus, etc. for not toeing the leftist line will be the same ones calling for Twitter users who don't toe the leftist line to be banned as well. Seems a pretty logical extension of an already existing, organized, and very vocal movement.
Recognize your privilege fool.
This is true. I've been using my white male superpowers to stare at women my whole life without even realizing I was a rapist.
Why wasn't this even mentioned at the secret white male meetings where we plot to keep everyone else down?
That might be true if the increasingly dominant radical-leftist ideology didn't define include "expressing a dissenting opinion" as *itself* a threatening act. Oh, excuse me, to use their language "creating a hostile environment."
I wish you were exaggerating. But there are leftist thinkers out there who have gone so far off into la-la-land as to think a statement like "I'm proud to be a Christian" is a statement of religious hatred (since they believe it implies that no one should be proud to be a Jew, Muslim, atheist, etc.). And those thinkers aren't even considered that radical anymore, especially on college campuses (and not just Berkley, mind you, we're talking state colleges in even some of the most conservative states).
It deeply saddens me to see that the liberal movement that I once supported is now actively arguing against the very right to free speech that we used to champion.
You're using the very same arguments that the far-right used to use to try to silence us. The "There are some people who citizens simply shouldn't be allowed to criticize" argument is the very same one we used to hear when we criticized the President or the government.
lol sjw are bad because i saw it on an internet forum
No, SJW's are bad because they get people kicked out their colleges, fired from their jobs, and even imprisoned simply for expressing opinions that disagree with their own radical ideology.