Fortunately, chemistry doesn't work like that or smokers would die of explosions instead of lung cancer.
They also cause autism.
There is zero evidence to this.
And thiomersal was removed from most vaccines, not because there was any evidence it was harmful, it's just what the conspiracy theorists and antivax con-artists latched onto so the CDC asked manufactures to remove them. Of course the CDC missed the point, the antivaxxers went after thiomersal not because they have any evidence, they were just against vaccines and it was the easiest target.
Removing thiomersal didn't cause them to trust vaccines, it just caused them to switch to a harder to remove target.
How is this different than any other business? A CTO with a million things on their plate may come to you and ask if you can speed up SAP deployment to a year.
It's a good question.
It's not a good question if you're about to give a presentation about the current deployment plan in 3 minutes and the CTO is suddenly acting pissed off and now wants it done before his contract re-negotiation.
1) If the CTO cared that much they could have asked the question before the big presentation. 2) The SAP deployment is for the company, not to pad the CTO's resume 3) It's your big moment, giving the presentation on all your hard work. Now the CTO is pissed off at you for no good reason and you're thinking about their unreasonable request.
You know I once saw a brilliant person taste a paint chip because they were curious about the taste.
Therefore if Trump starts eating paint he must be brilliant also!!!
OK, but he could say "there is a caravan of people coming, which amounts to an army threatening invasion, and the easiest way to deal with it is a wall."
That would be within his purview and emergency powers, at least close enough that it would likely pass supreme court review (in the current court, of course).
Just because you don't want something to happen doesn't mean it won't.
I doubt that even this court would buy it. It's just too obvious a ploy to get the money congress is refusing to allocate him. Which, is the entire point of the divided government in the US constitution.
I think the actual plan would be to declare an emergency as a way to justify ending the shutdown. I don't know if Trump thinks it would work but the administration basically expects it to fail, the plan there is to reopen the government and give Trump the SCOTUS to tweet at instead.
Netflix could create a lower priced tier with commercials. It could start at $5 a month for 1 concurrent stream for extremely price sensitive customers.
They'd be better off giving those users only a subset of content (no TV series or something). Netflix's brand is super-convenient no commercials, adding a commercial tier just kills their brand identity for a pittance of money.
"likely came AFTER" comes with no evidence to justify the assertion of likelihood. Again.
So? There's a ton of other evidence suggesting Russia hacked the DNC emails. The major piece of counter-evidence is the USB transfer which is meaningless.
And this evidenceless assertion as we get yet another Russiagate "bombshell" from anonymous sources (this time with Robert Mueller, Russiagate-supporter's hero, saying it's not so).
Yeah, it sounds like the reporter somehow got it wrong. And unlike the Fox News / Infowars alternate reality when Mueller says something it's probably accurate, and when the MSM realizes the story is probably wrong they drop it.
The only statement we have which tries to make the opinion (an "assessment") from the Obama administration which I can't find anyone who seriously believes;
Then pull your head out of the Fox News/Infowars bubble. The only people who "don't believe" the assessment are the people who worry that significant Russian interference delegitimizes Trump's presidency (which it kinda does).
Even the ostensible source of Russiagate stories—alleged collusion between some Russians and the Trump campaign—isn't looking so rosy for proponents anymore
Sources and evidence, not namecalling, are required to sustain convincing arguments.
The evidence that they're morons is they presented the timestamps as proof, apparently not realizing a USB transfer likely came AFTER the remote download.
Standard? Luke got his hand chopped off by the bad guy at that point in his story arc/training, and was taking cover from blaster fire. Luke was lucky in Episode V, not skilled. Vader had the upper hand the entire fight, and he knew it. Vader was going easy on Luke. Luke wasn't a one man army until Episode III.
Rey had a lot more combat training than Luke going into her first movie.
And I said "standard", not that Star Wars had specifically done that exact same thing before.
Young man without any training being called into adventure and within days/weeks going toe-to-toe with the toughest baddie is like one of the oldest tropes in SF/Fantasy.
And though Luke knew how to fly, that didn't make him the best pilot. He was a likely a better shot than Wedge or Biggs with all his practice against Womp rats. That is why they put him leading the approach in IV.
Rey was skilled with her staff combat, not lightsaber combat. She should have situational awareness, but she shouldn't have been so capable with a lightsaber. Kylo Ren had more training under Luke than Rey had at that point, and should have kept up his training, especially with the threat of Luke still out there. There isn't enough of a sense of a passing of time for Rey's training to be as extensive as Luke's. She's not only naturally better than her peers, she's magically better than everybody else, and from previous films "That's not how the force works!".
So flying a hovercraft in the desert and shooting little animals translating into being a great space plane pilot, and probably the best shot in a space plane. Totally realistic.
But translating skills from fighting with a staff to fighting with a glowing sword. Total BS!!
to indicate he could be trusted with a by the book movie. He just doesn't have enough experience directing large projects. It's weird. Abrams I get. He had a ton of big, successful movies under his belt (that I hated, but that's just me).
Well I think my comment might have been more pithy than accurate:)
I think Abrams was the "big boxoffice" guy, and he's made good TV shows, the problem is when he's given franchises they tend to be fanboy movies, he doesn't bring any of his own vision.
I think Disney figured that out and Rian Johnson was supposed to be a more visionary director who could do something risky.
And that's what he did... the risk just didn't pan out. The ensemble didn't quite mesh and the character actions didn't quite make sense.
So now they're going back to the proven formula of Abrams for the last one, because if the franchise is dying anyway you might as well wring out every last drop on your way out.
Solo was no Episode IV or V but it was easily of the same quality as VI, and IMO, far more enjoyable than literally any of the other films.
I think Star Wars was a product of its time, and what made it great was the lack of competition. These days, eye-popping special effects are a dime a dozen, and audiences are used to aliens and blasters. It had nowhere to go but down.
It definitely can't help that the Star Wars video games are there to sell microtransactions these days, either. Over half the American public plays video games, don't tell me it doesn't matter.
I haven't watched Solo yet but I wasn't surprised that it was a bomb.
Han Solo wasn't awesome because he was an awesome character, he was awesome because Harrison Ford turned out to be one of the best actors of his generation.
You can recast Batman, Superman, or Spiderman because the character will always be bigger than the actor.
You can recast a classic movie that left popular culture decades ago since everybody's forgotten the specifics.
You can't recast the defining character of an active Hollywood A-lister while that movie is still watched on a regular basis. That new actor just doesn't stand a chance of owning his own role.
it was just plain a bad movie. The character motivations didn't make sense, the fight scenes were poorly choreographed and there was no character arc like in originals or even the prequels. It was just bad film making.
No idea why they gave it to Johnson. Is he Hollywood Royalty or something? His filmography is sparse. I can't imagine him being handed the keys to the kingdom on one of the largest franchises ever with Looper under his belt and damn near nothing else.
It's pretty clear what happened to. They started doing the Solo kids story, Johnson decided he wanted it to be "his" thing and not just an existing story so he changed it all at the last moment and didn't have time to make it work with his limited skillset.
For the same reason they gave the first one to J. J. Abrams, they want something by the book that will deliver a big boxoffice even if it kinda sucks and kills the franchise down the road.
I also watched and found it to be a disappointing movie, basically a bunch of characters not talking for no good reason and making stupid decisions. And there were a couple weird bits that felt preachy, but this obsession with seeing it as a "SJW" movie is just on you.
If you would like some examples here goes...ALL MEN in the movie are shown as either weak, incompetent, reckless, or just plain idiots.
Luke was none of these things.
Admiral Gender Studies OTOH is brought in after killing a character everyone actually liked for no damn reason (Akbar) and then made out to be a heroine when SHE KILLS MORE REBELS THAN HUX DOES
She was a crappy leader for keeping her plan secret (the lazy screen writer's version of dramatic tension) but basically played the one move she had.
Then you have Mary Rey who can defeat trained Sith with ZERO studies cuz...vagina I guess?
If Rey was a male it would have been one of the most standard character outlines in existence. Absolutely nothing was unusual about Rey except her gender.
Oh, and she got personal training with Luke Skywalker plus we know she's super-powerful in the force which gives you a bunch of bonus bad-assery.
It certainly is never explained in the damn movie how she is able to defeat all these trained warriors when she was literally a scrap rat a week ago
Well actually in her introduction in the first movie it was shown that being a "scrap rat" involved her learning to be a pretty competent fighter.
Which is rather insulting that Lando in the 80s got to be a hero and the only black guy in the new trilogy is a pathetic bumbling sidekick but I guess being a guy trumps his being black in the Oppression Olympics.
Or your massive obsession with race and gender means you'll find a flaw with anything.
"Girl is the hero??? That's so preachy and SJW!!! Black guy is the B-plot comic relief protagonist? Ha! They're being racist!!""
Hell even Phasma which was built up to be this bad ass evil super trooper got stuffed on a bus and run off screen because God Forbid she actually be able to fight as gasp! Shock! that would mean someone would have to raise their hand to a wamens oh noes!
I'm not even sure what you're talking about now.
So I'm sorry but Kennedy and Johnson made it quite clear on social media this movie was down with Social Justice,
Maybe, but that's not why it was an underwhelming movie.
the entire plot is based on the premise the females are never wrong and all the guys are evil or incompetent,
They inverted some gender roles, it's not that big a deal. I've seen plenty of films with super-sexist bits and enjoyed them just fine otherwise.
this is right up there with Ghostbusters 2016 on the SJW scale
A decent movie that insecure guys massively overreacted to?
And virtually everybody in the US intelligence apparatus disagrees with him.
makes a compelling case that the DNC's network connection wasn't fast enough for the data transfer to have been sent from the DNC to someone in Russia over the Internet
No they don't, they're morons.
The metadata showing a 22.5 Mb/s transfer rate doesn't prove the files were downloaded from the DNC using a USB stick, it proves they were likely downloaded to (or from) a USB stick at some point.
And if I were a remotely competent hacker I'd be doing the same thing I do when connecting to a customer installation. Working from a computer on an airgapped Network.
And how do you move files back and forth from an airgapped Network?
‘ To this day, however, the intelligence agencies that released this assessment have failed to provide the American people with any actual evidence substantiating their claims about how the DNC material was obtained or by whom. Astonishingly and often overlooked, the authors of the declassified ICA themselves admit that their “judgments are not intended to imply that we have proof that shows something to be a fact.” ’
Seriously?
That article is preceded by a giant editorial essay basically saying:
"Hey! We only published this thing because we think it's important to ask more questions about the topic! Oh, and it turns out the article author actually misrepresented parts of the report, and the group that released the report actually had a lot reservations about publishing it!!"
The evidence that it was a Russian hack continues to be pretty overwhelming.
The president's party always loses seats in the midterms. It was true for Obama as well. The "blue wave" was expected to be overwhelming, and it... just didn't happen. We got a relatively normal midterm. Attempts to hype it up as something earthshattering are just false - turnout was slightly higher than expected, but still lower than presidential election years. You saw about an average swing. Sorry, the "blue wave" was just a normal blue trickle, and it'll almost certainly be entirely reversed in 2020, especially if Trump can remind voters of the record shutdown the Democrats caused the instant they had even a whiff of power.
Democrats won the generic ballot by 8.6%, compared to the "red wave" of 2010 where the GOP only won by 6.8%.
The reason the GOP had a 59 seat advantage with +6.8% of the vote while Democrats only had a 36 seat advantage with +8.6% is the GOP gerrymandered the hell out of the US in 2012, which is actually a pretty idiotic thing to do.
The point of winning is to enact your polities, and unless your policies include widespread civil unrest then undercutting the legitimacy of the government is not the thing you want to do.
Thing is, these companies are each pulling back their own little pockets of IP - but they are still trying to price it as if they were offering a broad selection of content.
All of these new services are probably worth maybe $3 or $4 a month each. Heck, nowadays that's really all Netflix is worth too. I'd probably pay Disney $4 a month... but there's no way I'm paying more than that for their piddly little catalog.
You're really willing to pay more for a fancy coffee than you would for an endless amount of commercialless TV and movies?
Have you tried watching traditional cable TV recently? It's horrible. Not only do you get all the repetitive "written for the commercial breaks" network programs but even the PVR boxes are completely unusable.
And people were paying like $100/month for that junk.
Sure the market is changing, but it still costs money to create that content and a lot of it is still being subsidized by the suckers paying for cable TV.
The cost is going to increase.
But there's another side to it. In 5 years the good content is going to be a lot more spread out. Partly that means that the "must watch" shows will be spread across a bunch of different services. But it also means there won't be many "must watch" shows. Right now GoT is the only thing I'll go out of my way to watch, but even that has gone downhill.
You don't need access to every show out there, right now I watch a bit of Netflix and if a show I heard about isn't on there I don't really care, I just watch something else. In 5 years I'll have one, maybe two services, but I won't feel the need to subscribe to a bunch of other services that are only mildly more interesting than what I have on hand.
Actors and actresses already spend huge amounts of time in makeup, how does this method compare to that?
Does it compound the effect of makeup so some actress in her late 40s can still get a lead role? Or is it one or the other, meaning that a lot of makeup artists will be out of work once this tech matures.
The US system doesn't give the President the powers to implement things like DACA, either, but that didn't stop Obama or the judges blocking ending it.
That's actually somewhat debatable, just Trump's Musl^H^H^HTravel ban (which I think was a lot more unconstitutional) the courts give the President a lot of latitude on how to enforce laws, particularly immigration law.
But there is no law that gives Trump the authority to expropriate a bunch of land and build a giant wall on the Mexican border. And certainly none that gives him the money to do so, that's unambiguously outside of his authority.
You'll find that the majority of what the federal government does these days is things it isn't supposed to have the authority to do.
Which is a completely different question from asking whether the Executive branch of the government can allocate money which is explicitly under the authority of the Legislative branch.
...or don't live in the US. This concept of a government shutdown is a bizarre one for those of us living in other countries.
In countries with a UK-style parliament the budget is regarded as a confidence motion and if it fails then the government automatically falls and there is an election. In addition, the budget usually only deals with changes and specific investments so if one fails to pass normal operations just carry on as they were before but there are no new projects or changes in taxes or benefits. You guys should try it some time.
I'm Canadian. I get enough of their news but don't actually have to live in the madness.
First-past-the-post parliamentary democracies get a bad rap for handing out majority governments with 30-40% of the vote, but they have a big advantage when it comes to dealing with this BS. When you have a majority government the PM has both the power to run the country and is held solely accountable for making it work.
American politicians dealing with the "division of power" have invented a strategy of throwing a wrench into the machine and blaming the other side when things break.
“With the southern border, we have the loss of at least 15,000 Americans a year. You have 2,000 that are homicides by illegal aliens, according to federal government data. You’ve got another 15,000, 16,000 that die each year from heroin overdoses, 90 percent of which comes across our porous southern border. That’s not counting the 55,000 additional deaths that are caused by overdoses, a significant amount of which comes across the southern border,” Brooks stated."
I've looked into this, and the numbers are accurate.
And completely irrelevant to a wall. Do you really think people are carrying bags of heroin on their backs through the desert? The heroin comes through ports of entry, hidden in trucks or ships.
Rep Mo Brooks is lying to you.
The GAO estimates for 2009 show that Arizona had 240 illegal immigrant inmates incarcerated in federal prison for homicide related charges. California had 2430, Florida had 480, New York had 1350, and Texas had 900.
"Taking the data only from these five states, and assuming that each person incarcerated for a homicide-related offense is responsible for only one death, yields 5,400 people killed by illegal aliens."
For comparison, automobile deaths in the US is around 35,000 annually.
Total non-medical deaths in the US is about 161,000 annually. Deaths due to illegals is more than 2% of that
Wow that article is hilarious.
"DACA is bad because a much larger group of which DACA is a very unique subset committed bad crimes!! And I'm skeptical of studies that completely contradict my thesis but won't actually say why!!!!"
depending on where you put the blame for overdosing.
All of this is fact, and should be the basis for any political arguments about the wall.
The human cost of not having a wall is very high.
Even assuming illegal immigration was as terrible as you say did you notice last year when Democrats and Trump agreed to a deal for $25 billion in wall funding, but then immigration hardliners came in and blew it up?
There's a reason they did that, a wall is a giant waste of cash and not that useful for stopping illegal immigration.
But if President Crybaby really wants a wall he can do the thing Presidents are supposed to do when they want a policy and needs the other party's support. Negotiate and find something of value they'll take in exchange.
The US system does not give Trump the right to build a wall without congressional support.
If you didn't read the news, you wouldn't know there is a federal shutdown.
There is literally no impact on regular Americans outside of DC.
As long as the taxes are removed from my paycheck, the government is not shut down.
I don't even feel sorry for the nonessentials. Go look for a new job not funded by taxpayers if you want to avoid political gridlock delaying your paycheck.
Unless you're a government employee who isn't receiving a paycheck.
Or planning to go to a National Park and noticed it's either closed or opened and trashed.
Or flying and dealing with longer lines due to pissed off and absent TSA screeners.
Or you'll just be dealing with some bureaucratic BS in a few months time and whining about lazy government employees not realizing the BS you're dealing with is because the department got way behind dealing with the shutdown caused by your hero's temper tantrum.
I think digital skills are a factor, but I think a bigger factor might be cultural alienation.
Realistically western culture is dominated by white males between 25 and 55, diversity is rising... but that demographic still rules.
Nevertheless this group is becoming a lot more progressive than previous generations of white males, the 65+ group of white males, and that previous group is becoming alienated from modern culture and acting accordingly.
And how do you explain being out of step with modern culture and morality? Well you justify it with a different set of facts, ie, fake news! The fake news isn't there to trick people, it's there to give them an excuse to trick themselves!!
That climate change will accelerate due to feedbacks is controversial to the public, but not among the only people who seriously investigate it.
What blog did you read that on?
Every serious news organization and magazine for the past 2 decades.
Seriously, stop this game where you pretend there's no scientific consensus. If you want into any sciences department at a University and start declaring that AGW isn't happening people are going look at you like you're a fruitcake.
I think it's important to note this is just one study. While the evidence for global warming as a whole is pretty overwhelming it doesn't mean that every bit of climate related research is correct.
Specifically, the idea that adding CO2 to the atmosphere will cause warming is well-supported by experiment.
The predictions of disaster are not well-supported at all.
That we've had climate change already is incontrovertible.
That climate change will accelerate due to feedbacks is controversial to the public, but not among the only people who seriously investigate it.
We're already in the middle of a mass extinction, that is just a fact.
To risk even more climate change in the middle of a mass extinction is lunacy. Sure the scientists might be wrong, and we might find some cool technological solution, but we also might be underestimating the severity of the situation we're about to encounter.
Slashdot Mirror
They contain mercury which is a neurotoxin.
Water contains hydrogen, which is an explosive.
Fortunately, chemistry doesn't work like that or smokers would die of explosions instead of lung cancer.
They also cause autism.
There is zero evidence to this.
And thiomersal was removed from most vaccines, not because there was any evidence it was harmful, it's just what the conspiracy theorists and antivax con-artists latched onto so the CDC asked manufactures to remove them. Of course the CDC missed the point, the antivaxxers went after thiomersal not because they have any evidence, they were just against vaccines and it was the easiest target.
Removing thiomersal didn't cause them to trust vaccines, it just caused them to switch to a harder to remove target.
How is this different than any other business? A CTO with a million things on their plate may come to you and ask if you can speed up SAP deployment to a year.
It's a good question.
It's not a good question if you're about to give a presentation about the current deployment plan in 3 minutes and the CTO is suddenly acting pissed off and now wants it done before his contract re-negotiation.
1) If the CTO cared that much they could have asked the question before the big presentation.
2) The SAP deployment is for the company, not to pad the CTO's resume
3) It's your big moment, giving the presentation on all your hard work. Now the CTO is pissed off at you for no good reason and you're thinking about their unreasonable request.
You know I once saw a brilliant person taste a paint chip because they were curious about the taste.
Therefore if Trump starts eating paint he must be brilliant also!!!
OK, but he could say "there is a caravan of people coming, which amounts to an army threatening invasion, and the easiest way to deal with it is a wall."
That would be within his purview and emergency powers, at least close enough that it would likely pass supreme court review (in the current court, of course).
Just because you don't want something to happen doesn't mean it won't.
I doubt that even this court would buy it. It's just too obvious a ploy to get the money congress is refusing to allocate him. Which, is the entire point of the divided government in the US constitution.
I think the actual plan would be to declare an emergency as a way to justify ending the shutdown. I don't know if Trump thinks it would work but the administration basically expects it to fail, the plan there is to reopen the government and give Trump the SCOTUS to tweet at instead.
Netflix could create a lower priced tier with commercials. It could start at $5 a month for 1 concurrent stream for extremely price sensitive customers.
They'd be better off giving those users only a subset of content (no TV series or something). Netflix's brand is super-convenient no commercials, adding a commercial tier just kills their brand identity for a pittance of money.
"likely came AFTER" comes with no evidence to justify the assertion of likelihood. Again.
So? There's a ton of other evidence suggesting Russia hacked the DNC emails. The major piece of counter-evidence is the USB transfer which is meaningless.
And this evidenceless assertion as we get yet another Russiagate "bombshell" from anonymous sources (this time with Robert Mueller, Russiagate-supporter's hero, saying it's not so).
Yeah, it sounds like the reporter somehow got it wrong. And unlike the Fox News / Infowars alternate reality when Mueller says something it's probably accurate, and when the MSM realizes the story is probably wrong they drop it.
The only statement we have which tries to make the opinion (an "assessment") from the Obama administration which I can't find anyone who seriously believes;
Then pull your head out of the Fox News/Infowars bubble. The only people who "don't believe" the assessment are the people who worry that significant Russian interference delegitimizes Trump's presidency (which it kinda does).
Even the ostensible source of Russiagate stories—alleged collusion between some Russians and the Trump campaign—isn't looking so rosy for proponents anymore
LOL
Sources and evidence, not namecalling, are required to sustain convincing arguments.
The evidence that they're morons is they presented the timestamps as proof, apparently not realizing a USB transfer likely came AFTER the remote download.
Standard? Luke got his hand chopped off by the bad guy at that point in his story arc/training, and was taking cover from blaster fire. Luke was lucky in Episode V, not skilled. Vader had the upper hand the entire fight, and he knew it. Vader was going easy on Luke. Luke wasn't a one man army until Episode III.
Rey had a lot more combat training than Luke going into her first movie.
And I said "standard", not that Star Wars had specifically done that exact same thing before.
Young man without any training being called into adventure and within days/weeks going toe-to-toe with the toughest baddie is like one of the oldest tropes in SF/Fantasy.
And though Luke knew how to fly, that didn't make him the best pilot. He was a likely a better shot than Wedge or Biggs with all his practice against Womp rats. That is why they put him leading the approach in IV.
Rey was skilled with her staff combat, not lightsaber combat. She should have situational awareness, but she shouldn't have been so capable with a lightsaber. Kylo Ren had more training under Luke than Rey had at that point, and should have kept up his training, especially with the threat of Luke still out there. There isn't enough of a sense of a passing of time for Rey's training to be as extensive as Luke's. She's not only naturally better than her peers, she's magically better than everybody else, and from previous films "That's not how the force works!".
So flying a hovercraft in the desert and shooting little animals translating into being a great space plane pilot, and probably the best shot in a space plane. Totally realistic.
But translating skills from fighting with a staff to fighting with a glowing sword. Total BS!!
to indicate he could be trusted with a by the book movie. He just doesn't have enough experience directing large projects. It's weird. Abrams I get. He had a ton of big, successful movies under his belt (that I hated, but that's just me).
Well I think my comment might have been more pithy than accurate :)
I think Abrams was the "big boxoffice" guy, and he's made good TV shows, the problem is when he's given franchises they tend to be fanboy movies, he doesn't bring any of his own vision.
I think Disney figured that out and Rian Johnson was supposed to be a more visionary director who could do something risky.
And that's what he did... the risk just didn't pan out. The ensemble didn't quite mesh and the character actions didn't quite make sense.
So now they're going back to the proven formula of Abrams for the last one, because if the franchise is dying anyway you might as well wring out every last drop on your way out.
Solo was no Episode IV or V but it was easily of the same quality as VI, and IMO, far more enjoyable than literally any of the other films.
I think Star Wars was a product of its time, and what made it great was the lack of competition. These days, eye-popping special effects are a dime a dozen, and audiences are used to aliens and blasters. It had nowhere to go but down.
It definitely can't help that the Star Wars video games are there to sell microtransactions these days, either. Over half the American public plays video games, don't tell me it doesn't matter.
I haven't watched Solo yet but I wasn't surprised that it was a bomb.
Han Solo wasn't awesome because he was an awesome character, he was awesome because Harrison Ford turned out to be one of the best actors of his generation.
You can recast Batman, Superman, or Spiderman because the character will always be bigger than the actor.
You can recast a classic movie that left popular culture decades ago since everybody's forgotten the specifics.
You can't recast the defining character of an active Hollywood A-lister while that movie is still watched on a regular basis. That new actor just doesn't stand a chance of owning his own role.
it was just plain a bad movie. The character motivations didn't make sense, the fight scenes were poorly choreographed and there was no character arc like in originals or even the prequels. It was just bad film making.
No idea why they gave it to Johnson. Is he Hollywood Royalty or something? His filmography is sparse. I can't imagine him being handed the keys to the kingdom on one of the largest franchises ever with Looper under his belt and damn near nothing else.
It's pretty clear what happened to. They started doing the Solo kids story, Johnson decided he wanted it to be "his" thing and not just an existing story so he changed it all at the last moment and didn't have time to make it work with his limited skillset.
For the same reason they gave the first one to J. J. Abrams, they want something by the book that will deliver a big boxoffice even if it kinda sucks and kills the franchise down the road.
So here's the thing.
I also watched and found it to be a disappointing movie, basically a bunch of characters not talking for no good reason and making stupid decisions. And there were a couple weird bits that felt preachy, but this obsession with seeing it as a "SJW" movie is just on you.
If you would like some examples here goes...ALL MEN in the movie are shown as either weak, incompetent, reckless, or just plain idiots.
Luke was none of these things.
Admiral Gender Studies OTOH is brought in after killing a character everyone actually liked for no damn reason (Akbar) and then made out to be a heroine when SHE KILLS MORE REBELS THAN HUX DOES
She was a crappy leader for keeping her plan secret (the lazy screen writer's version of dramatic tension) but basically played the one move she had.
Then you have Mary Rey who can defeat trained Sith with ZERO studies cuz...vagina I guess?
If Rey was a male it would have been one of the most standard character outlines in existence. Absolutely nothing was unusual about Rey except her gender.
Oh, and she got personal training with Luke Skywalker plus we know she's super-powerful in the force which gives you a bunch of bonus bad-assery.
It certainly is never explained in the damn movie how she is able to defeat all these trained warriors when she was literally a scrap rat a week ago
Well actually in her introduction in the first movie it was shown that being a "scrap rat" involved her learning to be a pretty competent fighter.
Which is rather insulting that Lando in the 80s got to be a hero and the only black guy in the new trilogy is a pathetic bumbling sidekick but I guess being a guy trumps his being black in the Oppression Olympics.
Or your massive obsession with race and gender means you'll find a flaw with anything.
"Girl is the hero??? That's so preachy and SJW!!! Black guy is the B-plot comic relief protagonist? Ha! They're being racist!!""
Hell even Phasma which was built up to be this bad ass evil super trooper got stuffed on a bus and run off screen because God Forbid she actually be able to fight as gasp! Shock! that would mean someone would have to raise their hand to a wamens oh noes!
I'm not even sure what you're talking about now.
So I'm sorry but Kennedy and Johnson made it quite clear on social media this movie was down with Social Justice,
Maybe, but that's not why it was an underwhelming movie.
the entire plot is based on the premise the females are never wrong and all the guys are evil or incompetent,
They inverted some gender roles, it's not that big a deal. I've seen plenty of films with super-sexist bits and enjoyed them just fine otherwise.
this is right up there with Ghostbusters 2016 on the SJW scale
A decent movie that insecure guys massively overreacted to?
Bill Binney's group seems convinced the other way
And virtually everybody in the US intelligence apparatus disagrees with him.
makes a compelling case that the DNC's network connection wasn't fast enough for the data transfer to have been sent from the DNC to someone in Russia over the Internet
No they don't, they're morons.
The metadata showing a 22.5 Mb/s transfer rate doesn't prove the files were downloaded from the DNC using a USB stick, it proves they were likely downloaded to (or from) a USB stick at some point.
And if I were a remotely competent hacker I'd be doing the same thing I do when connecting to a customer installation. Working from a computer on an airgapped Network.
And how do you move files back and forth from an airgapped Network?
You use a USB.
Former NSA experts say it wasn’t a hack at all, but a leak — an inside job by someone with access to the DNC’s system.
‘ To this day, however, the intelligence agencies that released this assessment have failed to provide the American people with any actual evidence substantiating their claims about how the DNC material was obtained or by whom. Astonishingly and often overlooked, the authors of the declassified ICA themselves admit that their “judgments are not intended to imply that we have proof that shows something to be a fact.” ’
Seriously?
That article is preceded by a giant editorial essay basically saying:
"Hey! We only published this thing because we think it's important to ask more questions about the topic! Oh, and it turns out the article author actually misrepresented parts of the report, and the group that released the report actually had a lot reservations about publishing it!!"
The evidence that it was a Russian hack continues to be pretty overwhelming.
The president's party always loses seats in the midterms. It was true for Obama as well. The "blue wave" was expected to be overwhelming, and it ... just didn't happen. We got a relatively normal midterm. Attempts to hype it up as something earthshattering are just false - turnout was slightly higher than expected, but still lower than presidential election years. You saw about an average swing. Sorry, the "blue wave" was just a normal blue trickle, and it'll almost certainly be entirely reversed in 2020, especially if Trump can remind voters of the record shutdown the Democrats caused the instant they had even a whiff of power.
Democrats won the generic ballot by 8.6%, compared to the "red wave" of 2010 where the GOP only won by 6.8%.
The reason the GOP had a 59 seat advantage with +6.8% of the vote while Democrats only had a 36 seat advantage with +8.6% is the GOP gerrymandered the hell out of the US in 2012, which is actually a pretty idiotic thing to do.
The point of winning is to enact your polities, and unless your policies include widespread civil unrest then undercutting the legitimacy of the government is not the thing you want to do.
This sort of shrill hyperbolic alarmism is counterproductive to getting people to take climate change seriously.
I keep saying that.
If anybody's wondering why folks like me are skeptical, it's because of decades of shrill alarmism.
And now insect populations are rapidly collapsing in many locations over the planet.
Apparently you should have been alarmed after all.
Thing is, these companies are each pulling back their own little pockets of IP - but they are still trying to price it as if they were offering a broad selection of content.
All of these new services are probably worth maybe $3 or $4 a month each. Heck, nowadays that's really all Netflix is worth too. I'd probably pay Disney $4 a month... but there's no way I'm paying more than that for their piddly little catalog.
You're really willing to pay more for a fancy coffee than you would for an endless amount of commercialless TV and movies?
Have you tried watching traditional cable TV recently? It's horrible. Not only do you get all the repetitive "written for the commercial breaks" network programs but even the PVR boxes are completely unusable.
And people were paying like $100/month for that junk.
Sure the market is changing, but it still costs money to create that content and a lot of it is still being subsidized by the suckers paying for cable TV.
The cost is going to increase.
But there's another side to it. In 5 years the good content is going to be a lot more spread out. Partly that means that the "must watch" shows will be spread across a bunch of different services. But it also means there won't be many "must watch" shows. Right now GoT is the only thing I'll go out of my way to watch, but even that has gone downhill.
You don't need access to every show out there, right now I watch a bit of Netflix and if a show I heard about isn't on there I don't really care, I just watch something else. In 5 years I'll have one, maybe two services, but I won't feel the need to subscribe to a bunch of other services that are only mildly more interesting than what I have on hand.
This is Elon Musk trolling for attention as usual. Of course he's not going to build a flying Tesla, why is this even on Slashdot?
He was also not going to build "a boring company".
Elon Musk says a lot of nutty things. The thing that makes him really unusual is he'll carry through on some of them.
Actors and actresses already spend huge amounts of time in makeup, how does this method compare to that?
Does it compound the effect of makeup so some actress in her late 40s can still get a lead role? Or is it one or the other, meaning that a lot of makeup artists will be out of work once this tech matures.
The US system doesn't give the President the powers to implement things like DACA, either, but that didn't stop Obama or the judges blocking ending it.
That's actually somewhat debatable, just Trump's Musl^H^H^HTravel ban (which I think was a lot more unconstitutional) the courts give the President a lot of latitude on how to enforce laws, particularly immigration law.
But there is no law that gives Trump the authority to expropriate a bunch of land and build a giant wall on the Mexican border. And certainly none that gives him the money to do so, that's unambiguously outside of his authority.
You'll find that the majority of what the federal government does these days is things it isn't supposed to have the authority to do.
Which is a completely different question from asking whether the Executive branch of the government can allocate money which is explicitly under the authority of the Legislative branch.
...or don't live in the US. This concept of a government shutdown is a bizarre one for those of us living in other countries.
In countries with a UK-style parliament the budget is regarded as a confidence motion and if it fails then the government automatically falls and there is an election. In addition, the budget usually only deals with changes and specific investments so if one fails to pass normal operations just carry on as they were before but there are no new projects or changes in taxes or benefits. You guys should try it some time.
I'm Canadian. I get enough of their news but don't actually have to live in the madness.
First-past-the-post parliamentary democracies get a bad rap for handing out majority governments with 30-40% of the vote, but they have a big advantage when it comes to dealing with this BS. When you have a majority government the PM has both the power to run the country and is held solely accountable for making it work.
American politicians dealing with the "division of power" have invented a strategy of throwing a wrench into the machine and blaming the other side when things break.
There is also the human cost to consider.
Rep. Brooks outlines the cost of not having a wall:
“With the southern border, we have the loss of at least 15,000 Americans a year. You have 2,000 that are homicides by illegal aliens, according to federal government data. You’ve got another 15,000, 16,000 that die each year from heroin overdoses, 90 percent of which comes across our porous southern border. That’s not counting the 55,000 additional deaths that are caused by overdoses, a significant amount of which comes across the southern border,” Brooks stated."
I've looked into this, and the numbers are accurate.
And completely irrelevant to a wall. Do you really think people are carrying bags of heroin on their backs through the desert? The heroin comes through ports of entry, hidden in trucks or ships.
Rep Mo Brooks is lying to you.
The GAO estimates for 2009 show that Arizona had 240 illegal immigrant inmates incarcerated in federal prison for homicide related charges. California had 2430, Florida had 480, New York had 1350, and Texas had 900.
"Taking the data only from these five states, and assuming that each person incarcerated for a homicide-related offense is responsible for only one death, yields 5,400 people killed by illegal aliens."
For comparison, automobile deaths in the US is around 35,000 annually.
Total non-medical deaths in the US is about 161,000 annually. Deaths due to illegals is more than 2% of that
Wow that article is hilarious.
"DACA is bad because a much larger group of which DACA is a very unique subset committed bad crimes!! And I'm skeptical of studies that completely contradict my thesis but won't actually say why!!!!"
depending on where you put the blame for overdosing.
All of this is fact, and should be the basis for any political arguments about the wall.
The human cost of not having a wall is very high.
Even assuming illegal immigration was as terrible as you say did you notice last year when Democrats and Trump agreed to a deal for $25 billion in wall funding, but then immigration hardliners came in and blew it up?
There's a reason they did that, a wall is a giant waste of cash and not that useful for stopping illegal immigration.
But if President Crybaby really wants a wall he can do the thing Presidents are supposed to do when they want a policy and needs the other party's support. Negotiate and find something of value they'll take in exchange.
The US system does not give Trump the right to build a wall without congressional support.
If you didn't read the news, you wouldn't know there is a federal shutdown.
There is literally no impact on regular Americans outside of DC.
As long as the taxes are removed from my paycheck, the government is not shut down.
I don't even feel sorry for the nonessentials. Go look for a new job not funded by taxpayers if you want to avoid political gridlock delaying your paycheck.
Unless you're a government employee who isn't receiving a paycheck.
Or planning to go to a National Park and noticed it's either closed or opened and trashed.
Or flying and dealing with longer lines due to pissed off and absent TSA screeners.
Or you'll just be dealing with some bureaucratic BS in a few months time and whining about lazy government employees not realizing the BS you're dealing with is because the department got way behind dealing with the shutdown caused by your hero's temper tantrum.
I think digital skills are a factor, but I think a bigger factor might be cultural alienation.
Realistically western culture is dominated by white males between 25 and 55, diversity is rising... but that demographic still rules.
Nevertheless this group is becoming a lot more progressive than previous generations of white males, the 65+ group of white males, and that previous group is becoming alienated from modern culture and acting accordingly.
And how do you explain being out of step with modern culture and morality? Well you justify it with a different set of facts, ie, fake news! The fake news isn't there to trick people, it's there to give them an excuse to trick themselves!!
That climate change will accelerate due to feedbacks is controversial to the public, but not among the only people who seriously investigate it.
What blog did you read that on?
Every serious news organization and magazine for the past 2 decades.
Seriously, stop this game where you pretend there's no scientific consensus. If you want into any sciences department at a University and start declaring that AGW isn't happening people are going look at you like you're a fruitcake.
I think it's important to note this is just one study. While the evidence for global warming as a whole is pretty overwhelming it doesn't mean that every bit of climate related research is correct.
Specifically, the idea that adding CO2 to the atmosphere will cause warming is well-supported by experiment.
The predictions of disaster are not well-supported at all.
That we've had climate change already is incontrovertible.
That climate change will accelerate due to feedbacks is controversial to the public, but not among the only people who seriously investigate it.
We're already in the middle of a mass extinction, that is just a fact.
To risk even more climate change in the middle of a mass extinction is lunacy. Sure the scientists might be wrong, and we might find some cool technological solution, but we also might be underestimating the severity of the situation we're about to encounter.