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Messages - honk

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1
Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: US Presidential Election 2024
« on: September 28, 2024, 04:01:25 AM »
This is my big issue with Trump. I disagree with his general worldview. But that's OK, that can be the basis for some discussion.
But the big issue is the way he comes to decisions and conclusions about things.
He sees something on TV about Haitians eating cats in Springfield - from one of the networks he watches which constantly reinforce his worldview.
He regurgitates it in the debate, is immediately told that there are no credible reports of that actually happening and just mutters "well, I saw it on TV..."

I think literally the next day he's announcing mass deportations, clearly having made zero effort to actually check anything

Now, clearly the mass immigration in to Springfield has caused issues. It's reasonable to believe that something should be done. But the something should be based on actual facts and an understanding of the situation, not right leaning media outlets feeding you lies which you don't bother to check and then start basing policy on even after being told that they were lies.

For someone who goes on about "fake news" all the time, he sure does like to lap up all the lies which feed in to his worldview. Which is depressingly common these days of course, but I don't think anyone who does that should be in any position of power. Make policy based on data and facts, not "stuff you saw on TV". Sigh.

Do you really think that Trump sincerely believes that Haitian migrants are running amok and eating pets in Springfield? I certainly don't. This is a strategic move on his part. He's seen success with making racist or racially-charged attacks in the past, and he's trying to replicate that.

2
Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: US Presidential Election 2024
« on: September 26, 2024, 03:22:12 PM »
Even tho it caused bomb threats?
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/bomb-threats-force-second-consecutive-day-school-closures-springfield-rcna171043

Yes.

Defamation is not protected speech.

Nor is it a crime. In any case, defamation has nothing to do with this particular case, as they're trying to hit Trump and Vance with criminal charges that I'm pretty sure took some creativity to dream up. I'm not going to spend time looking at the relevant statutes, but looking at "making false alarms" as an example - come on, that's meant to be for actual, literal alarms, like pulling a fire alarm as a prank, or causing a disturbance by yelling about a fire or a mass shooter or whatever in a public place. It doesn't mean that someone says something false and someone else hundreds of miles away feels "alarmed" by it. That's just wordplay.

3
Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: US Presidential Election 2024
« on: September 25, 2024, 03:41:29 AM »
So, we're going with "incompetence" for this one, it seems.

No, just standard politicking. No more necessarily incompetent than any other politician who does this kind of thing, which is all of them.

And the criminal charges keep piling up.
COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) — The leader of a nonprofit representing the Haitian community invoked a private-citizen right to file charges Tuesday against former President Donald Trump and his running mate, JD Vance, over the chaos and threats experienced by Springfield, Ohio, since Trump first spread false claims about legal immigrants there during a presidential debate.

There is zero chance of this even making it past a prosecutor's desk, let alone holding up in court. Everything Trump and Vance have said is one hundred percent protected by the First Amendment.

4
Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: US Presidential Election 2024
« on: September 21, 2024, 04:27:20 AM »
Politicians have been campaigning on offering solutions to problems that sound simple and punchy but are ultimately ineffective since the dawn of civilization. It's far more likely that that's what this is rather than any kind of insidious scheme to disarm the American public. Im fact, I'm pretty sure that nobody in the government is trying to "disarm" the public in that sense, because they know that the population is not going to rise up against them en masse, regardless of whether or not they have their rifles. Regardless of what incredibly shitty and unpopular laws are passed, 99.9% of Americans will continue to follow the laws and remain more or less conforming members of society. They're not going to quit their jobs and say goodbye to their families so they can become revolutionaries. It's not going to happen.

5
Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: US Presidential Election 2024
« on: September 20, 2024, 10:45:10 PM »
No, Harris does have a gun, and that was the context of her comment about shooting someone:

https://thehill.com/homenews/4889914-kamala-harris-gun-owner-oprah/

It makes sense for a prosecutor to own a gun. You never know when a criminal you've thrown in jail in the past might show up to say hello.

6
Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: US Presidential Election 2024
« on: September 19, 2024, 03:56:54 AM »
Did I really, though? Kamala isn't an unknown political figure, and Republicans have had more than enough time to adjust to running against her and prepare a negative campaign by now. They haven't been prevented from doing that. They just seem to be, well, paralyzed by the nominee change. It really seems like Republicans put all their eggs into the basket of Biden being a weak candidate whose age and diminished mental capacity would give them an easy victory. That's why Trump essentially squandered his VP pick on an untalented, uncharismatic, and repellent MAGA loyalist for the flex rather than try to broaden his appeal by choosing someone respected and established within the party. That's why there's been no real message or proper platform for his campaign. It's been almost entirely "Biden is old and weak (and has a shitty son). Vote for Trump instead." Replacing Biden has cut the heart out of Trump's entire approach.

7
Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: US Presidential Election 2024
« on: September 16, 2024, 02:38:01 AM »
Meanwhile JD Vance just admitted that the Haitians eating pets story was always a pie

Ignoring the obvious pie joke, he really didn't:

https://www.cnn.com/2024/09/15/politics/vance-immigrants-pets-springfield-ohio-cnntv/index.html

Quote
“The American media totally ignored this stuff until Donald Trump and I started talking about cat memes. If I have to create stories so that the American media actually pays attention to the suffering of the American people, then that’s what I’m going to do,” the Ohio senator said.

Bash replied, “You just said that this is a story that you created.”

Vance said, “It comes from firsthand accounts from my constituents. I say that we’re creating a story, meaning we’re creating the American media focusing on it. I didn’t create 20,000 illegal migrants coming into Springfield thanks to Kamala Harris’ policies. Her policies did that. But yes, we created the actual focus that allowed the American media to talk about this story and the suffering caused by Kamala Harris’ policies.”

It was poor phrasing, but he clarified what he meant by "create stories." He wasn't admitting that the whole thing was a lie.

8
Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: US Presidential Election 2024
« on: September 15, 2024, 03:21:32 PM »
I doubt that anyone here who watched the debate can even remember much of what Kamala said. Not too impactful to stick around in memory. Trump's words are remembered, however.



It's true that putting someone on the defensive and making them deny damaging allegations puts them at a disadvantage. A good example would be Elizabeth Warren, who has spent a lot of time fighting the (false) allegation that she pretended to be Native American to get herself jobs and scholarships. With every denial and plea for people to actually look at her employment history, she's only called more attention to the allegation, and so Trump's racist nickname for her has stuck and most people continue to believe that she pretended to be Native American, presumably because it's such a juicy story. Too good to be false, you could say. But for something similar to have happened to Kamala, she would have had to, like Warren, spend time specifically trying to deny the allegations about her racial identity and the eating of pets. She didn't, and I'm sure that Warren's case was the first thing she thought of when Trump first started making racist attacks on her. Really, what happened here is the opposite of the "pig-fucker" strategy. The goal isn't for the accusation to be remembered; it's for the denial to be remembered. But in this case, with no denial, it's only the accusation that's remembered.

9
Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: US Presidential Election 2024
« on: September 12, 2024, 09:52:23 PM »
Kamala was no more a "no-show" for the Fox debate than Trump was a no-show for the debate I held in my living room last night. There was no debate for either Trump or Kamala to attend. The Trump campaign literally made up a fake debate so they could accuse Kamala of skipping it.

10
Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: US Presidential Election 2024
« on: September 12, 2024, 05:53:56 PM »
The recent debate was a delight to watch. Kamala was strong and focused, while Trump ranted incoherently, got racist, and spouted insane conspiracy theories that the moderators firmly shut down. I won't go as far as some people in the media have by predicting that this has cemented Kamala's victory. That's ridiculous. In fact, this debate might not even matter in the long run. Trump's fans love him for precisely those qualities that the rest of the world sees as glaring negatives, and so this debate isn't likely to cost him much support. Which is entirely messed up when you think about it - the Democratic candidate is at risk of losing support if they do badly in a debate, but they don't really gain support if they do well. Still, not losing support is of course better than losing support, and no bad news is better than bad news, so this is at least a modest political victory for Kamala.

11
Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: Trump
« on: September 11, 2024, 01:28:33 PM »
No, I didn't. What a weird thing to say. ???

12
Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: Trump
« on: September 11, 2024, 03:46:30 AM »
https://www.cnn.com/2024/09/06/politics/manhattan-us-attorney-office-spokesperson-video-trump-hush-money/index.html

Here's what happened. Crowder sent an attractive woman to hit on this dude and say to him, "Oh, isn't it awful that they're trying to prosecute poor innocent Trump? You agree with me, right?" Blaise thought with his dick and promptly assured her that of course they're in full agreement on this subject, and of course Trump is entirely innocent. That's all this is. Blaise was not blowing the whistle or revealing secret information; he was trying to get laid.

13
Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: US Presidential Election 2024
« on: September 08, 2024, 08:15:14 PM »
Of course, the family invited Trump. Of course, the family allowed pictures.

It's not up to the family. Politicians are not allowed to hold political events and take pictures for the purposes of campaigning at Arlington. Nobody can make you admit that this was a political event and Trump was taking (very tacky) pictures for the purposes of campaigning. Nevertheless, any reasonable person would agree that's what happened, and that specifically, Trump's plan was to pretend that this was an official, public ceremony and blast Biden and Harris for not attending.* You can refuse to accept this and keep insisting "Nuh uh" all you want, but that doesn't mean you're making a good case or that you're a good debater. It just means that you're being obstinate.

*To wit, here's Fox News trying to frame the story that way once they received their marching orders:



Interestingly enough, this used to have a community note attached to it correctly pointing out that there was no official event, only a private ceremony, but it's no longer there, presumably because Musk intervened and had it removed.

Quote
This is why no charges were filed.

Use your head for a moment. Pretend for a moment that you agree with me that Trump was behaving illegally in this case. Do you really, really, think that any federal prosecutor, a few months before a presidential election in which Trump himself stands a good chance of becoming their boss, would dare risk their career by launching a lengthy, controversial prosecution against a powerful political figure who will undoubtedly take revenge if they're elected, all over a fairly minor offense? That would never happen. I would go so far as to say that Trump could have unzipped his pants and pissed all over the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier on camera and no prosecutor would have dared touch him.

14
Arts & Entertainment / Re: Superhero Movies & Comics General
« on: September 01, 2024, 06:10:05 PM »
That scene is far from the only moment in the movie where genuinely ambitious or interesting ideas are buried under poor execution. I don't want to spend too much time talking about Snyder fans rather than the movie itself, but so many of their defenses of it can be chalked up to them analyzing individual scenes or moments meticulously, deciding on what they're supposed to convey, and then accusing people who criticize them of simply not getting it. But movies are first and foremost meant to be watched and enjoyed, not picked apart and studied like they're an academic treatise. Part of the job of the director and screenwriter is to communicate their ideas to the audience using the language of film, and if they can't do that, and need to rely on fans going back over their movie to say "Hmm, yes, so what this scene really means is this..." or "People mock this scene because they think its goofy, but what they don't realize is that the characters were..." then they've failed in that job. To put it more simply, execution is just as important as intent, and simply understanding the intent behind any given scene or moment doesn't suddenly make the execution of that scene or moment retroactively better.

I could keep talking about this subject as it relates to BvS for quite a while, but I'll just give one more example: Batman's odd voiceover right at the start of the movie, where he says, "There was a time above... a time before... there were perfect things... diamond absolutes. But things fall... things on earth. And what falls... is fallen. In the dream, they took me to the light. A beautiful lie." Even setting aside the silly phrasing that comes from directly quoting Yeats and Heaney (doesn't sound so great when you take it out of context, does it?), what exactly is Batman talking about? The first part of it isn't too hard to figure out, especially seeing as it takes place during the Waynes' murder and subsequent funeral. Bruce Wayne's idyllic life was upended and everything changed after his parents were murdered when he was a young boy. Standard Batman origin story. But what about the final two lines, beginning with "In the dream..."? It's very cryptic, and doesn't sound typical for Batman. And I'm certainly not the only one who was puzzled by those lines, because Snyder has been asked about their meaning on the weird social media platform he likes. Here's his explanation:



I'm not going to make fun of Snyder for struggling to express himself verbally. I can see what he means, and it does seem to be a fair summary of this Batman's worldview. Unfortunately, expressing this Batman's worldview by way of a cryptic monologue that's never brought up again at the start of the movie only confuses the audience. Remember, this is a whole new Batman (hence BvS having yet another scene of the Waynes being murdered), and one that makes major deviations from Batman's usual character. The Batman of the comics, along with the various versions of him we've seen in previous adaptations, very seldom questions or doubts the righteousness and importance of his mission as Batman for longer than the space of a single conversation. The audience can't reasonably be expected to "get" from a couple of odd lines at the start of the movie that this Batman has lost faith in what he does the same way that they could reasonably be expected to "get" that Bruce's life changed forever after the deaths of his parents. The only people who are going to get anything out of this monologue are the fans who go back over the movie having already watched it and analyze each scene to figure out the filmmakers' intent. Everyone else is left confused after watching what amounts to a very standard, if over-the-top, Batman origin scene with a pretentious poem attached to it.

This has already gone on for way too long, so I'll just start throwing out some more standard critiques. The movie is dull and depressing. It makes no sense for Superman to be a brooding stoic, and just like MoS, the movie is far more interested in Superman as an idea than as a three-dimensional character with a personality and worldview of his own. Doomsday is awful - ugly, unfaithful to the source material, and completely superfluous to the titular struggle between Batman and Superman. If they had jazzed up the fight between Batman and Superman a bit, that would have been a far better climax to the movie than fighting Doomsday. I don't like that Batman uses guns and is a killer, especially when his killing isn't even an intentional reflection of this Batman having lost his way and gone down a darker route, but is just there because Snyder thinks that superheroes not killing is unrealistic, and also because he's an immature edgelord who's insecure about liking capeshit, so he feels the need to edge it up. I also don't like how the Batmobile is this armored behemoth that smashes through everything in its path with brute force. That's just not Batman, and it's not the Batmobile. I've noticed this trend of trying to "toughen up" the Batmobile in adaptations before, notably in the Nolan trilogy and Arkham Knight (and parodied in The Lego Batman Movie), and I can only assume that it's coming from a place of embarrassment in dealing with the fact that Batman drives around in a bat-themed car.

Is there anything I like about this movie? At times it's beautiful. I like Wonder Woman - it's funny now thinking back to how brightly, and yet briefly, Gal Gadot shone as seemingly the MVP of the entire DCEU. The effect largely wore off right around the time that WW84 flopped commercially and people stated to get tired of Gadot's very limited acting talent, which became all the more clear with every movie she appeared in. Still, at least for this movie, the novelty of seeing this character on the big screen for the first time, combined with Gadot's striking looks and charisma, were a highlight of BvS, and definitely paved the way for her own movie to become such a big hit. And as much as I don't like Batman as a killer, I think there's something very compelling about this Batman, not least of which is Affleck's strong performance. It really is sad seeing the difference between Affleck's performance in this movie and how much he phoned it in in his later appearances. He really believed in this movie, and it's clear that its critical failure crushed him. Oh, and Jeremy Irons plays a very solid Alfred (interestingly enough, deviating from the latest trend in adaptations of giving Alfred working-class roots, as we've seen in the Nolan trilogy, Gotham, and The Batman) and has a good rapport with Affleck.

The best scene of the movie is, just as I felt when I first saw it, Batman's fight scene in the warehouse. It's not perfect. I (obviously) don't like how Batman kills a few people, I don't like how he uses his enemies' guns and knives against them, and I don't like how Batman can endure gunshots at close range and still keep fighting (although they do at least stagger him somewhat, which is definitely preferable to how The Batman and The Flash portrayed him as entirely unfazed when several enemies emptied their assault rifles into his chest all at once). But apart from those details, it's fantastic to see a Batman who's moving fast, hitting hard, using his gadgets, and generally being a very believable physical threat. I also really like how the scene shows Batman take a few hits and get knocked to the ground (I whupped Batman's ass) at one point, only for him to keep fighting effectively from the ground until he can get back on his feet and regain the offensive. It's so much better than the previous movies where Batman slowly lumbered about under a heavy rubber suit, and it's crazy how they kept doing that for so long. Nobody cares if the Batsuit isn't as solid and heavy as a realistic suit of armor would be! It's fucking capeshit!

The negative impact of this movie was momentous. Audiences did not like this movie, and I want to be very clear on this point, because it's yet another detail that Snyder fanboys keep trying to rewrite history on. Look at the numbers for a moment - poor word of mouth was killing this movie at the box office within the very first weekend. That's not normal! Usually a front-loaded blockbuster performs well throughout the first weekend, and then starts sharply declining. But no, even on the very first day it came out, people were already telling their friends not to see this shitty movie. And it did still have an enormous drop-off the next week. Overall, the movie grossed $874.4 million at the box office, which I'm sure made WB a healthy profit, but for a movie starring Batman and Superman together for the first time? With the first appearance of Wonder Woman? And at the height of the capeshit boom? It should have grossed twice that, or at least over a billion. This was all the evidence WB needed that Snyder was toxic to their brand. It's not hindsight to say that this was their warning (I would actually argue that MoS was their warning) and that they should have cut ties with Snyder immediately. Not slowly pivot away from his vision, not add more producer notes to his films, but immediately pull the trigger on a new director and a new overarching plan for the DCEU. But they didn't, and so we ended up with the flop that was JL. I'll talk about JL later, because, again, this has grown obscenely long, but it's important to remember that the immediate reception to JL was a direct consequence of BvS's poor reception. It had nothing to do with Joss Whedon or studio interference. All that stuff only came to light much later.

Many old-school capeshit nerds will call BvS the worst capeshit movie ever made. I wouldn't go that far. For all its cynicism and edge, there is at least an artistic sincerity to it that comes of a director who was genuinely trying to make a good movie, as opposed to a studio that shits out a lab-produced movie that's little more than a collection of "trailer moments" and lousy jokes. So by that standard, it's at least better than the theatrical cut of JL and Suicide Squad. But make no mistake, it's bad. It's very, very bad. And, yes, I know this review is ridiculously long, and probably nobody is even reading this far. I can't help it. I just had so much to say about this.

15
Arts & Entertainment / Re: Superhero Movies & Comics General
« on: September 01, 2024, 06:07:53 PM »
I'm delighted that Crudblud has finally resumed the Batshit Odyssey and reviewed BvS. I largely agree with most of it, and especially how overwhelming it feels to try to appropriately criticize a movie this monumentally, fundamentally wrong-headed and broken. The best thing I can do, I think, is just sort of list all of my issues with this movie one after the other, and not to spend too much time or effort on trying to summarize it all. I've ranted about BvS in this thread many times over the years, but it'll be nice to have all of my points, or near enough, in two posts.

If I had to point to what's the biggest issue in BvS, which is no easy task, I think I'd single out just how hollow the central conflict - the "v" of the title, so to speak - feels, and how little of the movie contributes to that conflict, despite being ostensibly presented as such. Let's start from the beginning. I actually don't think that Bruce's introductory scene on the ground in Metropolis during the flashback to MoS is a bad one. I mean, it wouldn't be the beginning of my ideal capeshit film, and I think it's really tacky how heavily and deliberately Snyder invokes the imagery of 9/11, but there are a lot of things that work here. Bruce running into danger while everyone else is running in the opposite direction is a strong visual, there's a poignancy to Bruce comforting the young child that's surprisingly gentle for Snyder, and Bruce's furious glare at Superman says far more than any dramatic speech or vow of revenge would. If nothing else, the scene is at least clear. It very firmly establishes Bruce's personal animosity towards Superman. There's still over two hours of movie to go before Batman challenges Superman, so you'd expect his opinion of Superman to be expanded upon in that time, right?

But it isn't! It's all just red herrings and pointless diversions, most of which stem from Lex Luthor's ridiculous and overly-complicated master plan. For example, there's Guy With No Legs, as Crudblud dubbed him. He's an employee of Wayne Enterprises who lost his legs during the destruction of Metropolis, and is now a hobo. Bruce tries to do right by him by sending him disability or compensation checks, but they're returned uncashed, with "YOU LET YOUR FAMILY DIE" scrawled on one of them. This is actually Lex's work, though - he's intercepted the checks and sent them back with that message. In the meantime, Lex seizes on Guy's disability and financial straits to groom him into becoming an anti-Superman activist who will testify at the congressional hearing - except Lex puts a bomb in his chair, which explodes and kills everyone. Now, Lex does all this because...because...he's trying to unnerve Bruce (whom he knows is Batman, because reasons)? He tricks Bruce into thinking that his former employee blames him for what happened, has refused his money, and become a suicide bomber. Well, I don't know if Bruce could reasonably be expected to know that it was Guy who blew up the hearing, as only Superman, being the only survivor, could have reported on what happened. But we'll give the movie the benefit of the doubt and say that Bruce has been successfully tricked into thinking Guy rejected his money and blew up a congressional hearing instead. What does this actually change between Bruce and Superman? Bruce already hates Superman and already thinks he's a danger to the world. What was the point of this whole scheme?

A subplot that I find even more frustrating concerns the character of Kahina Ziri. She supposedly witnesses the chaos that Superman causes in the fictional African nation of Nairomi near the beginning of the film, and publicly accuses Superman of killing innocent people and not caring about whom he hurts. I think it's a pretty bold idea and a strong visual to have an African woman call out Superman, with all his power and privilege, and basically challenge him to do better, and the movie is clearly drawing a parallel between Superman and real-world American military intervention. This is what motivates Superman to decide to start looking for out the powerless instead of just responding to major catastrophes, and this ends up with Clark investigating the stories of Batman and the stabbed prisoners. So far, so good...but no, because then it turns out Kahina was lying the whole time. Instead of being a character with agency, she was just another one of Lex's hired pawns, and is murdered after she has a change of heart. Turns out Superman had nothing to worry about and no need to change his priorities or worldview at all! What bullshit! Snyder teases this really provocative and genuinely deconstructive idea, and then he chickens out on actually following it through!

I just mentioned the prison stabbings, which are also weird. This movie first indicates to us that this is a darker Batman who's been pushed over the line by showing us that he's been branding criminals that he captures with the shape of his bat symbol. This is what gets Superman on the case of Batman, and I do think that having him stand up for the rights of prisoners is a refreshing character beat and a very Superman thing to do. However, the movie textually is less concerned with the cruelty of branding prisoners and more with the fact that branded prisoners are being murdered by other prisoners when they're in jail. In Superman's eyes, Batman isn't just being cruel; he's responsible for these deaths. So now we have a clear ideological conflict between Batman and Superman...except that no, because it turns out that Lex was paying prisoners to murder the branded criminals. See, Superman doesn't really have a big problem with Batman after all, because it was all Lex's fault. Like I mentioned a few posts ago, the movie treats Batman sparing Lex his brand at the end as a turning point for him and a sign that he's moved past his darkness, but why? The brandings were apparently only bad because of the prisoners being stabbed, which only happened because of Lex's machinations.

There are more examples in the movie of how the enmity between Batman and Superman, or the enmity between Superman and the world at large, all come down to Lex's ludicrous and convoluted master plan rather than genuine ideological conflicts between the characters. The only conflict between them that isn't engineered by Lex is the one that's established at the very beginning of the movie - Batman's anger at Superman over the events of MoS. Instead of building on that, Snyder just wastes two hours of screen time on Lex's diversions and manipulations. It's narrative dead air, and it's dogshit storytelling to have both main characters be manipulated by another character this much. Agency is important. There's a world of difference between Batman and Superman fighting because they chose to and them fighting because Lex has manipulated them into fighting. I honestly believe that Snyder doesn't understand this. If asked about it, he would probably say, "What does it matter if Batman and Superman meant to fight or if they were tricked into fighting? What's important is what's on screen. The scene of them fighting would still play out the same way, so it wouldn't make a difference to the audience."

And even setting aside the fundamental problem of Lex's master plan fatally undermining the conflict between Batman and Superman, the fact is that the plan is very silly on its own merits. It's way too complicated, it relies on specific actions being taken by multiple other characters that Lex had no way of accurately predicting, while it also paradoxically has weird blind spots like Lex bizarrely equipping his men with rare, experimental ammunition that can be traced back to him, which Lois inevitably ends up doing. That last detail especially grates on me because it's such an obvious and weak pretext on the part of the screenwriters to get Lois involved with the main plot. They really couldn't come up with anything better than our supposedly ingenious villain conveniently (and for no discernible purpose other than reasons) using special ammunition that would lead right back to him? The movie would be have been much stronger and more focused without Lex's goofy master plan dictating the plot. If they really wanted Lex in this movie, then they could have kept him in the background as an agitator, someone who's trying to pit the rest of the world against Superman, and that would have been a good tease for him to maybe be the main villain in a later movie.

I'm going to keep talking about Lex! Without even discussing Jesse Eisenberg's performance, this character is terrible as written. Most of his dialogue feels like it's meant to reinforce either how smart or how weird he is. Regarding the intelligence aspect of it, this is not a convincing depiction of a smart person. I know I've shared this article before, but it really does do a great job of breaking down the superficiality and utter inanity of the intelligence that Lex supposedly displays. There had to have been a better way of showing off how smart Lex was. Like, maybe the movie could have shown him designing the anti-metahuman weapons he was interested in, or perhaps building a power suit for himself. Or maybe they could have shown us how Lex discovered the identities of Batman and Superman - it really grinds my gears how the momentous story detail of Lex Luthor knowing who Batman and Superman are is treated in such a casual way. Even just giving him a few scenes of technobabble would have been more effective than "Let's have him bring up Icarus; only really smart people know the story of Icarus!" As for Lex's weirdness, it doesn't serve any narrative purpose, I can't imagine any actor somehow making his lines not incredibly annoying, and I'm pretty sure that it all came down to just another capeshit movie trying to make its villain more like Heath Ledger's Joker from TDK.

A bit about shared universes now - I get why Snyder didn't want to just copy the MCU and put teasers for upcoming movies at the end of this one. There's nothing wrong with trying to integrate those elements into the movie properly. However, having Wonder Woman just watch three teasers for upcoming movies directly before the climax of this one, with dramatic music blaring as our title characters prepare for their final showdown, is not what I'd call good, organic integration. There must have been so many ways to hint at the existence of Aquaman, Cyborg, and the Flash without having to just watch these videos back to back in such a clumsy, forced way. Maybe Clark or Lois covered a high school football game that Cyborg played in for the Daily Planet. Maybe Batman investigated the convenience store robbery when he heard about the involvement of a super-fast metahuman, logically suspecting Superman. Maybe Wonder Woman knows about Atlantis or has encountered its people in the past. And if they really wanted to keep the videos that we saw in the movie, they could at the very least have pushed them to way earlier in the movie, maybe with Lex showing them to Holly Hunter during the scene where he talks about metahumans. Also, implying that Lex is the one who designed these capeshitters' logos is really fucking lame. It makes the whole universe feel so small.

That being said, Wonder Woman watching these teasers right before the climax of the movie isn't nearly as bad as the ridiculous "Knightmare" scene. I really feel like this scene was almost forgotten in the wave of negative criticism that was directed at BvS after its release, and as such has never gotten the shit it truly deserves. Because it really is one of the worst scenes in the movie. For one thing, it's just another teaser for an upcoming movie. This scene goes on for five minutes and bears no relevance to the actual movie it's in, being immediately forgotten and only brought up again in the Snyder cut of JL. And not only is it just a teaser, it's also a really bad teaser. It's - intentionally, I believe - vague and obscure, beginning in medias res and providing no explanation to the audience of what's going on in this scene or why. I don't think there's anyone in the world, no matter how much of a DC fan they might be, who could have watched this scene for the first time without being baffled. Again, to stress this point, this isn't simply one line of dialogue or a brief exchange, it's a whole five minutes of the movie, nestled right in the middle like a short film. It's insane that Snyder thought it would be a good idea to interrupt his own movie and confuse the audience for five minutes with this fever dream, and it's even more insane that a producer didn't intervene and insist that the scene be cut. Also, I have no doubt that the presentation of Batman as a trigger-happy gunslinger and Superman as a murderous dictator were for the sake of edge and shock value more than anything else.

Speaking of bad scenes, let's discuss the most infamous one of all - "Martha." While it was universally mocked when BvS first came out, this scene does play a key role in the efforts of Snyder fans to argue that BvS is actually a good movie and is simply misunderstood by people who didn't "get it." Their argument goes that of course Batman doesn't really spare Superman's life simply because his mother has the same name as his. That's just a coincidence that gets Batman's attention, and by extension has him realize exactly what he's doing. He's about to kill a defenseless man in cold blood, a man who means no harm and has objectively done great things for the human race, a man who has someone who loves him enough to dive between him and his would-be killer, a man who loves and cries out for his mother, just as Batman remembers doing himself as a young boy all those years ago when his parents were taken from him. Batman realizes that because of his fear and paranoia, now he's the man with the gun, and he's the one who's about to permanently separate a loving mother and son. And so he flings his spear away in disgust, etc.

I have no doubt that this was the intended takeaway for audiences in this scene. And as described here, I think it sounds perfectly fine. Poignant, even. Unfortunately, the scene doesn't quite resonate this way on screen, and the main reason why is the "Martha" factor. The movie puts way too much emphasis on this odd maternal coincidence and plays it up as a huge dramatic moment that's enough to throw Batman for a loop and change the whole situation, even if we're meant to understand that it's not in and of itself the reason why Batman spares Superman. That's how movies work, after all - once you frame something as being important using the language of film, then it becomes important to the movie regardless of whether that's consistent with the characters or story. Batman and Superman having mothers with the same is important to this movie because it's framed as being important, and no after-the-fact rationalizations will change how this scene actually plays out. The end result is that the audience is primed by a scene like this to immediately start thinking about geeky capeshit trivia instead of actually being moved by Batman's arc.

I honestly don't think that the "Martha" coincidence should have been brought up at all. Like, maybe they could have squeezed a reference to it at the end of the scene and put it in place of Batman saying "Martha won't die tonight" to Superman. I think with that line the film is trying to suggest that Batman might actually find some psychological closure for his failure to protect his own mother by saving Superman's mother - which is genuinely a pretty ambitious and interesting idea for Batman. But they didn't really need to invoke the coincidence to communicate that idea, and could have conveyed it just as easily - and a bit more clearly, too - by simply having Batman say something like "I lost my mother when I was a child. I won't let you lose yours," to Superman. Like I said, the coincidence is just geeky capeshit trivia, and bringing it up at all risks overshadowing the poignancy of Batman's arc. I have no way of knowing this for sure, but I honestly suspect that it was Snyder himself who decided that this bit of trivia needed to be "addressed" and worked into the story. It feels like the kind of thing a dumb fanboy like him would insist on including in the movie.

16
Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: US Presidential Election 2024
« on: August 31, 2024, 02:55:05 PM »
"He wasn't talking about black people! He was obviously just talking about congresspeople in general! You're the one who's racist for assuming he was talking about black people! And even if he was talking about black people, there's nothing racist about saying that some black people are smart and some are dumb! That's no different to white people! You're the one who's racist!"

17
Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: US Presidential Election 2024
« on: August 31, 2024, 05:24:39 AM »
How many politicians have pictures of themselves laying a wreath at Arlington National Cemetery? Can we just assume that it is many politicians, or do we need a collage of demonstrative photos? It could be argued that any sharing of a picture or video of a politician at Arlington is used for political reasons, as it would imply a moral or patriotic message about that politician.

Those pictures are taken by official Arlington photographers for official Arlington events. Once the politicians have access to the pictures, they can of course do whatever they want with them, but what they can't do is bring their own photographers onto Arlington to take pictures for their own political gain.

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you are a colonial era puritan who says it is inappropriate to smile or display positive gestures at cemeteries

No, I didn't say that. I'm specifically talking about Trump's performative broad grin and thumbs-up. The vast majority of people can intuit a clear difference between an occasional smile and a display of crude, gleeful exuberance, especially when it's coming from a politician who doesn't know any of the deceased.

18
Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: US Presidential Election 2024
« on: August 31, 2024, 01:27:14 AM »
Trump grinning and flashing a thumbs-up in that picture - beyond being incredibly tacky and inappropriate - is all the proof we need that this was meant as a political stunt and wasn't simply a neutral, respectful visit to the cemetery. Why would he be posing like that if it wasn't meant to be a political photo op? In fact, why would Trump's own photographer (as opposed to the official photographers who work at Arlington) be there and photographing him at all if it wasn't a political photo op? By the way, it's only a matter of time before Trump changes his story to "Yes, this was a political photo op, and it's good that it was." He first denies, then admits what happened every time he gets into trouble, and every time he does, he makes the people who have been denying the story on his behalf look ridiculous.

19
Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: US Presidential Election 2024
« on: August 30, 2024, 01:22:36 PM »
I especially love how part of the plan was to pretend this was an official memorial and then criticize Kamala for not attending. And judging by the number of Trump fans on Twitter I've seen responding to this story by asking where she was or why she wasn't there, it may actually be working, at least among their target audience.

20
Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: Is the UK okay?
« on: August 30, 2024, 01:45:46 AM »
Right - and that's illegal in the USA

...

Right. But that's identical to the USA. I don't understand how you're only now discovering that inciting violence is not acceptable in the West.

Like I told you, incitement has to be in regard to imminent illegal action to be against the law in America. As in, it needs to be in the heat of the moment, right then and there. Posting on social media, "People should commit this crime," and someone else reading the post and thinking to themselves, "Hmm, this person makes a good case. I think I will go commit that crime!" would not be illegal in America, while it evidently is in Britain.

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Some pertinent quotes from your first example:

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Jordan Parlour, 28, was jailed for 20 months after pleading guilty to inciting racial hatred with Facebook posts in which he advocated an attack on a hotel in Leeds as part of the violent public disorder that swept England last week.
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In Northampton, Tyler Kay, 26, was given three years and two months in prison for posts on X that called for mass deportation and for people to set fire to hotels housing asylum seekers.

For what it's worth, I'd strongly suggest not posting "Dagnabbit, those there immigrant hotels, we should burn these sonovaguns down! Come join me on <date> at <time>! Load my guns and horn my swaggle, we're goin' a' killin' tonight!" It's not gonna go well for you.

It would be entirely legal for me to call for hotels housing immigrants to be burned down in America. If I said that I was going to do it, it would become a threat, which is not protected speech, and if I called for people to join me at a certain date and time, it would become planning an attack, which is also not protected speech. But none of these guys threatened to do these things themselves, much less planned an attack out, so that's not really relevant. All their charges came down to simply encouraging other people to commit crimes, which is protected speech in America outside of the imminent factor.

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Also, out of curiosity - do you know who Wayne O’Rourke is, or did you just bring him up because you thought the short article supported your position?

I don't know who he is outside of what the article says, and I don't think it really matters. The point is that nobody in America could ever be prosecuted for "stirring up racial hatred" or "anti-Muslim rhetoric."

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Once again, I'm assuming you have no idea who "Count Dankula" is, and outside of "haha wow silly Britain arrested a guy for a Nazi dog!!!!!" you have no awareness of his long history with law enforcement?

You're right again, but I also don't see why that matters. Free speech has to be for everyone, regardless of their criminal record or how shitty they are as people, to truly mean anything.

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The lengths you've been going to defend actual neo-Nazis here are impressive. I know this is out of extreme incompetence and not malice, but I'm not sure I'll be able to take you seriously the next time you claim to not be racist, or to support anti-racist movements.

Oh, come on, do you really think this huhuhuh you must agree with him then! bullshit is going to work on me? Really? That's a Babby's First Free Speech Debate-tier fallacy if I've ever heard one, and it's beneath you.

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I'm not sure how you can see a man who posted photos of himself holding a gun and threatened to kill people based on their religion and decide that it was "ranting about Muslims". It really surprises me that you see no difference between making credible threats on people's lives and "ranting". Then again, I understand you've got a mythology to defend here.

Was he actually making threats, though? Because he wasn't charged with making threats, and neither the prosecutor nor the judge described what he said as being a threat. The whole case seemed to revolve entirely around him saying "offensive" things and stirring up hatred. I think it would be a higher priority to take down an armed man who's threatening to go out and kill minorities (and prosecute the case as such) than it would be simply to take down a guy saying racist stuff online, even in Britain, and the fact that this didn't happen suggests that the authorities didn't view this as a threat at all. The gun can easily be explained as just a prop to make himself look tougher and more badass.

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Have you read that article? Did you follow up on what happened after it was published? It's talking about law enforcement overstepping its boundaries, and it has since led to significant adjustments. Like, yea, things went badly eight years ago when the government was trying to respond to a rise in violence. Lessons were learned, changes were implemented, and now things are going less badly. This is a good thing - it shows that our system works, and self-corrects when needed. I think y'all could learn from that, and it's not the big "gotcha" you were looking for.

I was just Googling around for examples of Britain punishing people for speech that would be protected in America. I should have guessed that I'd land on some outdated results. I do still feel that governments policing the expression of opinions like this is both fundamentally wrong and far too much power for them to be trusted with, but I'm glad that improvements are being made.

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